I want to build/buy platforms that have the functionality like weebly.com or homestead.com or yola.com. Any ideas where I should look? Any suggestions? I want to host this platform for small business to build their websites for free - niche based, geographically categorized, etc. etc. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks,
Sameer
Joomla is a great open source platform and it definately fits into your "free" criteria. But there will be a learning curve if you're not familiar with that stuff. I personally hate Yola and Weebly. The websites just look ugly... Cubender (www.cubender.com) is a new product - seems interesting. They have a free trial and the sites look pretty good.
try use a cms to build this website , like joomla
Related
I want to develop a nice looking web application which contains a little UI, communicate with a SQL Database and is able to show animated statistics. (Something like that: http://www.awwwards.com/).
Till now, I just developed webpages using HTML, CSS, JavaScript, PHP and have some experiences in C# and I do not know exactly how to get this fancy looking stuff on my application.
Is there maybe something existing which I can use/buy or maybe i should take into consideration further options than javascript...?
I appreciate every hint.
You can do animations with HTML5 -- there are amazing stunning websites using only HTML5 take a look at this for example: http://animatron.com/
But there are several tools that can help you accomplish what you want - HTML5 will be more natural as any other
Good Luck!
I'm researching the choice of drag and drop html5 web development tools that can be used to quick prototype, test, and possibly deploy a fully interactive animated website.
I've taken a look at Google Web Developer but that looks like it is intended to develop animated ads and not web sites.
So I thought it would be interesting and educational to ask you guys to help create a practical list of the 'all-in-one' tool choices that are out there and are the most useful.
Of course writing code is the best choice when time and budget allow but for a quick 'live' demo or prototype drag and drop can often be used to illustrate an idea quickly and maybe inspire more budget for the project :-)
Thanks for any help.
If you spare some $$, try Macaw... there's also a trial version if you want to do something in 30 days.
Macaw is a very new tool with focus on web design. As far as user base, I can't tell, but there has been lots of buzz around it.
You might get around with Google Web Developer for animation, as you mentioned... But if you're willing to experiment with something even newer, there's a project on github called theatrejs.
I use FrontPage for two different tasks; authoring html help and authoring a couple of websites. The websites don't require a lot of stuff -- they are there to disseminate a bit of information to a couple of small audiences.
FrontPage has been quick and easy for these tasks. WYSIWYG is good for these jobs and I like being able to click on links to quickly bring up other pages in the editor.
I've been exploring all sorts of options. tools that work online such as Kompozer make editing the html help difficult (at least, I haven't found a way around) and other html-level tools are just too much work. Tried nVu, Kompozer, Aptama, Komodo, Bluefish and so far, unless I'm missing something, I'm not sold on any of them.
I'm about to take a look at SeaMonkey but wondering if anybody has any recommendations. Or should I go back and look at those other tools again -- maybe I missed something?
Notepad++
I think the natural upgrade path would be Microsoft Expression Web.
People still use FrontPage?
I switched a couple of years back to DreamWeaver and never looked back.
Something to consider is that you could deploy these sites as wikis (which don't have to be publically editable) and edit them directly on the web in your browser. This would give you the ability to click around and do pretty much wysiwyg edits. It would also make it easier to maintain larger collections of data and to make new pages. You also don't really have to do any HTML at all because wikis mostly come pre-HTMLed (and CSSed and Javascripted), you just need to fill in the content.
I should note that this won't work if your webpages are deployed statically on a restrictive shared hosting account, but even most shared hosting supports installing things like wikis these days, so hopefully this is something you can look into.
I should also note that this probably isn't the best way to do local HTML help files, but if the HTML help is online, this is probably still a good choice.
I'm making this community wiki so others can add links to other wikis if they like or add more info on why you might want to or not want to use a wiki for this purpose.
Some wikis to consider:
MediaWiki - The wiki behind wikipedia
MoinMoin - Implemented in Python and popular in that community.
TiddlyWiki - Implemented in Javascript and runs on a single page. This is probably the most different wiki that's out there. Some love it, some hate it.
NVU and Kompozer both are best suited for you. NVU is my personal choice. Choose your poison. :)
FrontPage has been replaced by SharedPoint Designed in the Office suite.
You could also use Microsoft Expression Web if you can have it.
Drewamweaver or MS's Visual Studio/Web Developer Express will do the trick. They're both overkill (especially MS's tools).
I also think MS has (free) HTMLHelp. It's out there, but I don't know if it'll produce the files you need.
It depends on what kind of pages you are designing. If you are using Adobe Flash, Dreamweaver would be the best option but I would recommend "Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express". I am currently using it and totally love it from the bottom of my heart.
I'd say Dreamweaver, but last time I looked there was still bloated code, not as bad as the MX days mind.
Smashing Magazine has a list of WYSIWYG tools that would be worth a look :
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/05/06/25-wysiwyg-editors-reviewed/
I persuaded my friend to ditch Dreamweaver for NetBeans, took a week or so but I got a pint out of that :)
You might look into Aptana (http://aptana.org) which should provide everything you need. I think it even has a WYSIWYG editor, though I would really recommend learning html instead.
I would use Notepad++ for the simpler things, and Dreamweaver when working with other Adobe products. Notepad++ is simple and has a lot of great features. Dreamweaver is huge and will take some getting used to.
Try dokuwiki. I've implemented a wiki/manual/documentation for my app in a week. It's very simple n easy installing. You just need PHP, no database (mysql), the information is stored on files. Give it a try.
My wiki implemented wiki doku: wiki.vigo.com.br
Microsoft Visual Web Developer Express perhaps? http://www.microsoft.com/express/vwd/
Works well, and it's free!
Something similar to FrontPage is Adobe Contribute. It does cost $199, but if you're looking for something as simple as FrontPage, it may be a good option for you.
A freelancer web designer I work with will setup clients who want to make simple HTML edits to their sites with it and they've all been pretty happy. They're all non-technical people.
Dreamweaver is good, but however using the WYSIWYG may have problems getting consistency when viewing between IE, firefox and safari.
I want to get more inspiration and ideas for creating web based business applications. These apps have treeviews, tabs, grid, forms, panels..etc. I develop apps but want to improve my design skills. So I would like to look at very good looking online business apps which have good use of text and background colors, good use of a general theme across the site, good use of white space, groupings and a clean layout.
I am NOT looking for web design templates or how to design a web page using css and columns.
I want to design a business app (semi heavy use of controls) which looks polished and professional.
So if you encountered a business app site or template which you liked, please share.
Business app means something like mint.com or salesforce.com.
these apps are worth
checking out for ideas (you can sign up free accounts with all of them)
Invoicing:
Freshbooks.com - popular
Invoicemachine.com - polished UI
Cannybill.com - polished UI
Blinksale.com
GetBallpark.com - very slick and new, saw it on reddit a few days ago
Accounting:
Xero.com - polished UI, they also use lots of ExtJS controls (rare)
LessAccounting.com
Project management:
Basecamphq.com - popular
There is lot more at feedmyapp.com
Check out Salesforce.
Look at the pinnacle of web applications: gmail.
I was impressed with the Terracotta site, it has a lot of good info without being too cluttered.
The Zoho Suite is pretty sweet.
Seconding gmail, and the whole rest of Google's apps. Bonus attention to Google Calendar, that thing is a fantastic example of a classic desktop app made better on the web.
You could also take a look at the samples here:
http://www.sencha.com/products/js/
I am working with an artist to make her personal website. She would like to sell her artwork from the website. The issue is, she would like to be able to add, remove and price the artwork herself. She would also like to use paypal as the payment method.
Obviously design and coding is easy for me, that's all static. I am not sure however, what the best method would be to set up a way for her to add artwork herself.
I know there are some open source e-commerce sites (magento, zencart ect.) but I have never used these and feel they might be a bit overkill for a simple art site. Is there something else really simple I should use?
Any general thoughts or suggestions are greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Use a ecommerce site, its the obvious choice if she wants to sell stuff.
Zencart isn't as overkill as you think - it allows you to remove all the bits you don't want from the site using its admin gui; so you keep just the categories and the cart sections.
It also has options (IIRC, but I may be thinking of a different one, like CRELoaded) that provide for pay-and-download links.
Certainly, reusing ecommerce code will be a lot easier than writing your own.
Always use an existing framework for commercial sites. It's just too easy to make a silly mistake which allows hackers to take over control of the server.
I recently found a really cool (and free) method of using php and javascript to upload, resize thumbnails, and display all uploaded content from the folder.
Taking this code from a free tutorial and pairing it with a customized javascript gallery looks really slick (used it for my own photography site as well as a few clients who loved it).
Very soon I will be combining it with a site for a historical golf course architect... a gentleman has come to me with hundreds of pictures he would like to store on the web, but he wants the capability to upload himself at any time. The trick is this: If your client artist wants to price it herself, the gallery use would require her to be able to navigate the basic html framework enough to change the descriptions which appear beneath all of the pictures as she adds/changes them.
If you want to get started on your own check out some of the tutorials here:
http://net.tutsplus.com/category/videos/screencasts/page/3/
as well as finding a gallery that you both like for displaying the photos in an attractive way... Let me know if you want anything else from me :)
Why don't you create a simple administration panel where s/he can add, remove and price the artwork? Do you know any programming languages? PHP?
Virtuemart is based Joomla CMS , very easy to set up, an Open Source eCommerce solution. You might find a lot of free extensions of Joomla for photo gallery and other things.
Gallery2 is an excellent web-gallery software, suitable for presenting images, videos, and audio.
It has a "CheckOut with PayPal" plugin.
Gallery2 will require some time to configure, it is unlikely that you will use it "as is" after install.
Gallery2 is easily embeddable - provided minimal PHP skills, and good HTML/CSS skills, one can make it fit inside any design (maybe except for the grid-like thumbnails layout, which I guess is possible but harder than average).