I am currently building a project ecommerce website (for an assigmnet), and would like some tips from the experts around. Should I go for a frontend based on purely HTML,CSS and JS (say with a jquery framework) or should I include a CMS such as Joomla in order to be able to manage better the content ? I am not a very experienced web developer so there is quite a learning curve I have to go through in this.
Thanks
I suggest you use HTML, CSS, JS. They are the three major languages that make up most of the web. It allows a lot of flexibility.
I don't know if you have a domain name or plan to have one but…
There are many web hosting provider that propose built-in solution for e-commerce.
You talk about Joomla but there is also many other CMS that allow you do create e-commerce pages. A Wordpress module can do it with, for example, which I personally think as easier to use.
By the way, if you got enough time and motivation, I recommend you to search for documentation and to experiment the most you can on a custom-coded frontend.
I don't know what is your level in the HTML/CSS/JS languages, but you'll gain experience and that's always usefull.
I am building a prototype of a financial visualization app, using Meteor. I have zero experience in programming, the extent of my knowledge is what I have taught myself in HTML, CSS, JS and Meteor over the last year. I have a solid working prototype, enough to showcase the benefits of the app and am continuing to add more features.
At some point, I will either find a technical partner (with equity) or find funding to hire a developer. In the meantime, various people have recommended that I spend some money ($500-$1,000) to hire a designer and give the app a better look. I am open to this but my questions are:
how would I incorporate this design work into my app? Would they work directly in my code? Or would they provide me with mockups that I would then need to somehow replicate in my HTML/CSS?
I would love to make improvements to the app, especially if I am seeking funding, as I will quickly approach the limits of my programming knowledge (this is a side project). I'm missing a step as to how I would do this. Thanks.
In my experience, the designer will create a wireframe for you. Basically a fully designed page with hard-coded dummy data. Then you can take their code and replace the dummy data with live data.
Make sure you use version control for this step. You want to make sure you can revert to your version in case something doesn't end up working correctly.
There are pre-made templates and themes for websites that can be free or cost as little as $100. You don't get a personalized touch, but they can make things look presentable if you don't want to break the bank for a designer.
I have been creating websites in html and Wordpress for a while, but recently I was asked to look at a website that had been created very badly with a bootstrap based CMS, they were ripped off big time.
I understand that Bootstrap is basically a collection of styles etc but what I do not seem to be able to find is how to integrate a bootstrap template that I will purchase into a website with e-commerce functionality. The template has all the needed shop pages etc I just need to know how I go about making the online shop using the template.
Bootstrap is not a collection of styles -- its a templating system that modifies the layout of the web page content based on the users 'viewport'. in other words it changes the page design for smaller screens like mobile smart phones and tablets. its awesome for e-commerce especially considering the rising growth of sales over mobile,
but otherwise you don't make an online shop with a template, its kind of the other way around. so unless you really want to learn e-commerce programming, consider using a dedicated service like http://www.shopify.com If you want to integrate e-commerce with an existing website, http://www.foxycart.com is very good.
If you are moving it to a completely new setup and are comfortable using WordPress you could use that as a CMS and add e-commerce functionality using WooCommerce. It's trivial to add the plugin and configure it, and customising it is straightforward as it has a pretty good template hierarchy system that makes it easy to override using your own custom templates. It also uses a comprehensive set of filters and actions so custom functionality can be added in future if required.
In terms of adapting an existing theme (Bootstrap-based or otherwise) to work with WooCommerce it's just a case of creating additional templates if required and adding some additional CSS if need be. I'd recommend doing that using a child theme so that the parent theme can be updated in the future without overriding any of your customisations.
The advantage of this setup is that you're working on a platform you're comfortable with (WordPress) and there's a fair amount of support and articles available to help you along. The client would also benefit as it's a pretty popular solution, so they shouldn't have any trouble finding devs/or agencies to work on it in the future (just in case you aren't available).
One potential disadvantage is the WC can be a bit sluggish; I'd recommend not being cheap when it comes to your choice of hosts. I've used TSO before and would recommend them.
I'm trying to add this template to active admin on my rails app
http://themeforest.net/item/wintermin-bootstrap-admin-theme/8447093?WT.ac=category_item&WT.z_author=geedmo
But for the life of me, I can't work out where to do it. Has anyone had experience in completing something like this before?
If so, where do i start?
Update
I've created a GitHub project where you can see all open-source themes available for Active Admin. Check out.
I know that the question has almost 2 years, but the first (and accepted) answer doesn't seems to provide enough information. ActiveAdmin already has some custom styles / themes that you can easily integrate with your project. You can start from one of these themes (forking it) and making the needed changes to achieve what you want.
Here's some nice themes for ActiveAdmin:
Active Material
Active Skin
Active Admin Theme
If one of these themes seems okay to you and you don't want to change it, just integrate one of them into your project (it's very easy, as you can read in their documentation).
Looking at the theme, it will be bootstrap with some custom styles.
You need to have bootstrap requested somewhere (i.e a bootstrap for rails type gem, or use CDN) and also include the custom CSS from this theme.
What you then do with it is up to you - it won't magically pop up looking like that unless you have all the same html/erb that is running that demo.
I'm trying to create a theme for a CMS, but it's proving nearly impossible, as I have no understanding of PHP or ASP.NET. I can put a site together via CSS and HTML, but I want clients to be able to add and edit content themselves. I'm about ready to give up on designing one altogether and just use an existing theme.
I've had a go at trying to understand the inner workings of Wordpress, SilverStripe, Umbraco and Pixie, but the tutorials have left me confounded. Are there other CMSes I should be looking into for a more simplified theming process?
I'd really love to be able to just drop a chunk of code into the content area of a given HTML page, and make that region editable from a WYSIWYG front end that the client can log into. Is there such a thing?
Anything but DotNetNuke.
I'd recommend giving Wordpress another try.
I'm no web developer, just a an average Java/C# programmer who needed a web site and has some basic knowledge of HTML and CSS. What I did was find a theme that was similar to what I wanted, then started tweaking it incrementally. My theme is pretty basic, but before long I got a pretty good grasp of "The Loop" and printing out category and page links and such.
How about Movable Type?
You can (and should) edit the templates via the web interface, they are divided into separate modules, so you can concentrate on one area of the site, styling is of course handled via CSS.
It took me a few hours without any prior experience with this CMS to completely port a Wordpress theme to MT - I found the documentation very helpful and didn't even have to look elsewhere.
An awesome thing about MT - it generates static pages based on the templates you defined. Meaning, very low load on the server, you don't need to query the database on every request, etc. You could probably do the same/similar by activating the cache plugin (or is it built in now?) in Wordpress, but here it's the default modus operandi so it's more stable and integrated with the CMS.
Drupal with the zen theme (or a "lighter" version of it: Starkish theme) seems like a popular choice (and well deserved, too). It gives you a good starting point, it has great documentation and many modules available.
PS: I've added this as an additional answer so that it can be voted upon separately from my other suggestion - I just could not stop myself from bringing up the Drupal + zen combo :)
I worked with Joomla, it is really easy to have a theme for it without knowing any programming language. When you install it using a simple installer, there will be a folder named templates. There are three simple themes each in its own folder. Just copy one of them,change XML data for that theme ( just to name it and have some details, no programming ) and change the contents of CSS and HTMLs. every where you see something unrelated to HTML like , copy them!! Names are descriptive. so you can guess what do they do. give it a try!
I'd really love to be able to just drop a chunk of code into the content area of a given HTML page, and make that region editable from a WYSIWYG front end that the client can log into. Is there such a thing?
The only system I've come across with this kind of functionality is Perch.
Just create your website using HTML/CSS as usual and chuck in a few small php tags where you want editable content. These areas are then added to an admin area for your clients to edit.
The only drawback is it costs £35 per site - I don't know if there's a free/open-source CMS with this functionality...
It's difficult to say which CMS will be the best one for you (maybe your question should be made into a community wiki question).
I have a little experience with mojoPortal, and found it to be easily customizable. There's a lot of documentation about how to skin your CMS and there a lots of complete skins that you can use as a starting point.
There is also a demo site, where you can see how the CMS works for an end-user.
Take a look at Joomla. That was the first CMS that I really used, and I still think its templating engine is better than most of the others out there.
Its template system essentially lets you build a standard web page, and then use some simple tags to define where the content and modules would go. You can override the output of most external components and modules without too much trouble, and the vast library of third-party extensions should help you add a ton of functionality to your site without much coding on your part. Joomla also has a fairly easy-to-use administrative backend, so your clients should like it too.
This page for themeing Wordpress helped me a lot:
Theme Development
UPDATE
Xichael,
If you know HTML and CSS pretty well, but you just don't want to spend time learning the Wordpress framework, then I think this is a good option for you (again, I can relate to your situation). Use Wordpress with the new Toolbox starter theme. It's super minimal.
Toolbox: An HTML5 WordPress Starter Theme
Here's an example of what it looks like. Just "View page source" and go to town on the CSS!
I've thought about writing my own very simple CMS just for handling pages, i.e. you have some sort of template, and then a <div> in the middle to drop in text from a WYSIWYG editor. You could even use XML as the data store to eliminate having to set up a database to store the page content.
It would sort of be re-inventing the wheel though, because there is so much polished CMS software out there already, but it wouldn't be that hard because it wouldn't have 99% of the features most systems have. However, what happens when your client wants to add something in the future that's already standard in an existing CMS or plugin?
If you are looking for a simple CMS tool, CMSimple is as basic as it gets. A small PHP based CMS system that does not even require a database or XML.
"CMSimple is the ideal tool for a single user to maintain a website."
Original version here: CMSimple.ORG
Original plus 2 enhanced versions here: Download CMSimple
117KB content manangement system
no database required; the entire site is stored in a single HTML file
built in WYSIWYG
no modules or widgets, no blog, no comments, etc., just basic pages
uses PHP (but no database)
Get themes here: dotcomwebdesign.com