I have a few programming articles I would like to write, but I do not have a site of my own - yet ;).
Is there a site that is specifically geared toward technical / programming topics, with great functionality and style? Or will I have to go with things like wordpress or blogspot?
I would like a site that can track number of views and that has an intuitive commenting system.
Any thoughts would be appreciated.
There are other platforms, but you can do a lot of things with a Wordpress installation and the right plugins: there are plugins for analytics (you can use Google's or install something like Piwik)
The commenting system is the classical one for blogs, and you can add extra things to it with plugins (like the possibility to edit it after submit) - is there something in particular you are looking for?
The style is for you to choose and customize. There are a lot of free themes, and you can change a lot about it.
Wordpress is quite powerful when you own the domain and can control everything, so I think it's worth a try.
See http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/ but that is highly specialized
Rox suggested WordPress. I would second that. You don't need your own domain to start a Wordpress blog. Just go to wordpress.com and sign up. You will probably get an address like wordpress.com/. The advantage would be that when you get your own domain, you probably can export all your content and import it in your own wordpress installation on that domain.
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If I need to build a website that allows users to update their content (personal information), and I also need to create a login system (accounts for users), does it make sense to build this from scratch using HTML/PHP, or should I go with something like Drupal or Wordpress? I don't know too much HTML/CSS/PHP but I've never touched a CMS like Drupal before.
Thanks for the advice!
well if you don't know much about those subjects then i'd suggest that you use use wordpress. it extremely easy for majority of people to pick up, has oodles of plug-ins, and tons of support.
also, in my experience i've found drupal to be a tad bit steep for most people to pick up.
Use a CMS. Developing anything beyond very basic functionality from scratch is generally a waste of time and is likely to result in an insecure system that doesn't easily scale or allow you to add additional functionality.
Both Wordpress and Drupal will do what you describe, I prefer Drupal as a more flexible and secure platform.
I'm somewhat unclear on what you are trying to accomplish but if you are looking to give users the ability to sign up for the website and attach additional information to their profile I'd use the Profile 2 module with Drupal to build out the extra profile fields you'd like to track.
I'm not as familiar with the Wordpress module landscape but a quick search finds the Cimy User Extra Fields plugin which appears to have similar functionality.
You can use buddypress framework which runs above wordpress. It comes with built in capabilities to create a social networking type web site. No need to do coding and theming. Lot of themes and plugins are available in internet to extend its default look and behaviour. Wordpress is very easy to use and you can implement addons as plugins to extend its capability. Buddypress is an addon for wordpress to create community websites. Also many video tutorials are there for learning wordpess development. Visit wordpress.org and buddypress.org
OK, the title is a bit misleading I suppose, but only because I'm not really sure how to condense down what I'm looking for.
Currently, I have my own personal site that I've built which rests on a CMS that I also built. I wasn't really interested in blogging when I started the site (it was mainly to showcase my Android apps), so I only added basic 'blogging' features like posting news items and such.
As of late, however, I have taken a keen interest in blogging, and would like to pursue it on my website. The issue I'm having is that I don't particularly want to invest the time it would take to expand upon my CMS to include things like archives, comments, search, and all of the other various blogging-related features that are standard.
So what I'm looking for is a blogging engine that I can plug into my existing site framework. I have found tons of services that are platforms that you build on top of (i.e Wordpress, Chyrp, and TextPattern just to name a few) but that's not what I want. I'm looking for something that I integrate into my site, not something I integrate my site into (if that makes sense).
So you want a third-party application that can plug in to a proprietary custom-built blogging/CMS framework? Unless you patterned your framework after some other publicly available and widely used framework then I think it is very unlikely that such a thing exists.
I'd suggest maybe seeing if there's a way to come up with a database migration script that will take the data that your custom framework is using and translate it into something that an existing blogging platform can understand. Then just completely replace your custom platform with the prebuilt one.
I want to setup a simple site and I don't have any web development experience.
For a start, I need to create a basic form where I can post text and store it in a database. Nothing fancy.
Questions that I need answers:
Good free web hosting sites?
Any frameworks that I should use? (I'm familiar with Python and C++).
Are there websites where users can store and search any type of data?
Note that it's for personal usage and that I use Windows XP.
(I don't have any web development experience: I know HTML, how to use CSS, and I've tried Javascript, but I didn't build any real site)
I'd really like your help on this.
If you're familiar with Python I'd suggest using the Google App Engine. It's free if you don't have a lot of traffic and the framework provided there is also very easy to use.
If you just need a form and storage, then the absolute simplest solution (no coding required) would be a Google Docs spreadsheet form.
If you're only storing text with no need for intelligent queries, you could also consider using a wiki. I have my personal site hosted by wikidot.com which is free and perfect for my needs (I use it to store all my links with comments and some reviews).
Regards,
Sebastiaan
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I'm biting the bullet and becoming a Web Designer, there are just too many good opportunities out there. I'm a professional SW engineer, so I want approach this correctly. So far I'm fairly good at HTML/CSS/Javascript all completely by hand. I'm also good with jQuery and Django with mySql. I've made some cool sites but it takes TOO LONG if I want to do this for many sites.
Here is my question: Do I learn a CMS really well and use it (and be stuck with it) or do I spend that time developing some reusable HTML/CSS templates and do everything by hand?
So far my CMS experience is that there is overhead setting it up, and it you want a lot of customization you're doing CSS anyway.
If I go the CMS route -- which one?
What is the "best method" for Web Dev? I intend on creating a very diverse array of sites as well...
Thanks!!!
The future of web publishing is clearly in Content Management Systems for everything larger than a small personal site. People are not buying sites anymore for which they have to pay a professional every time a paragraph needs changing.
Make sure you know your HTML, CSS, and Javascript, but get familiar with one or more CMS's on the market, preferably one of the big ones that get you a big community, and the advantage of a widely known standard that it is easy to find people for. Learn how to customize it, how to build templates for it quickly and effectively.
One of the biggest flagships in enterprise-level CMS'es is certainly Drupal. From personal experience, I also know Joomla, but I'm not sure whether I'd recommend it to get started with - it tends to be a bit dirty on the code side sometimes. WordPress is successfully used as a CMS by many.
Look around on SO what systems people are happy with; if you want to get to know the concept of a certain CMS check out openSourceCMS who provide live demos of many CMS'es. There are also very robust commercial products out there that are better maintained than the open source projects.
There isn't a single correct answer for this IMHO. Basically, it comes down to:
Use the best tool for the job.
The best thing you can do for yourself is learn about what tools are available, and what they are capable of. Try to match each one to a scenario you think might be particularly suitable for a given solution.
You will find that if you invest a lot of time in learning something like Python / Django you will be able to create just about any site you can imagine, but then you might find that if all your client requires is a simple, mostly static company info site that something like Drupal might be more appropriate.
The baseline technologies like (X)HTML, JavaScript, CSS and SQL are used across all of them, so knowing these tools well in a generic context is also extremely valuable.
A truly well-equipped toolbelt is invaluable.
If you need a little number of pages, without any dynamics, render your site with your favorite language and numerous templates to html files and don't deal with anything but www-server.
Once you need a rather big site - use a tool which you already know well. (I using django and happy with it).
When a site is really huge - make your own CMS. But at first have a practice with tool like django. Until you know how it works - try not to deal with big projects at all.
I can advice to use statically typed language for anything, but i'm sure that you know benefits and caveats.
Python and Django is suitable almost for anything.
I am a Web Designer and recently I began using Wordpress. I've found it great so far, once I have my site ready in xHTML and CSS it only takes me a couple of hours to make the content editable.
I have also created about 3-5 themes my self, I've found creating Child Themes and using Themes like Twenty Ten as a parent, so I can use their functions etc.
I would highly suggest that you look into wordpress, especially if you want to speed up the process for creating websites.
Those two choices aren't mutually exclusive.
You should build reusable code regardless of which option you choose. With a CMS, there will already have some design decisions made for you of course, but I find myself building APIs and interfaces using Drupal all the time. In fact it's a measurement of quality.
There are also some frameworks that you might like too that will let you custom build and increase productivity. See The Zend PHP framework, Ruby on Rails, Kohana, Nanoc and the 960 CSS/HTML grid. You could say they are the best of both worlds!
If you are going to implement web sites for the general public, I'll go with Joomla. I managed to implement 9 websites in one year with this CMS. In my opinion, it is important to know PHP, HTML, CSS and Javascript pretty well before using Joomla (which you seem to know), or any other open source CMS for that matter. This way, you will be able to customize all aspects of the website (both frontend and backend) with ease. For example, when I don't find a plugin which does what I need, I just create the plugin myself.
However, if your aim is more on Web Applications rather than web sites, I'd go with ASP.NET and ExtJS, which seems to be today's trend for web applications since you will be combining the power of ASP.NET with the power of AJAX (ExtJs).
IMO, Python is more targeted for very large and complex projects (look at Google or Amazon).
I mean this quite literally. A close relative wants to create her own website for her business and asked me for help. I've offered her to set up the website, take care of domain registration and all, but I don't have the time to design the website for her. So, I want to give her a software in which she can edit the page and publish it on her own.
My feature-wish-list. The software should
of course, be easy-to-use, as she's not a pro at the computer
be able to publish the website, once the ftp-connection has been entered
have some predefined themes, but also the possibilites to define a custom theme
offer a german UI, since she doesn't understand english
I so far looked at Nvu (too complicated), zeta Producer (crashed even before I could start editing the first page), CityDesk (very promising, but still too complicated and not in german). I'm quite happy with Namu6, but unfortunately, it is english only.
I'd be happy for any suggestion.
[edit]
Some were asking for a platform: She is only using windows, so Mac or Linux is not an option.
My mom uses vi for this
Consider setting up a CMS for her and let her edit the pages in the browser.
I was happy with citydesk for imachines.com, but lately I've moved towards just suggesting a blogging tool and doing it that way (e.g. wordpress, blogger, etc...). Websites are complicated because they are a 'web'. I'm not sure my mom could ever do it.
Google has a webpage service, besides Blogger, I think it' called Pages. Or if she has a Mac iLife has a decent tool set for the average non technical user
You don't mention which platform. If Mac is a possibility, take a look at iWeb, part of the iLife suite.
Depends on what she needs the site for and what you are capable of setting up for her. Google sites are free and easy to set up/use, but they're damn ugly.
Set up a free Blogger or WordPress account or run a hosted WordPress installation.
Engines like Joomla tend to be a bit technical on the admin back-end, but are also easy to edit from a front end editor's point of view - their WYSIWYG editor allows you to edit content from the front end, which I've found useful for non-technical types.
Wordpress is actually a nice and capable basic CMS system that just happens to have a blogging engine built into it.
Chances are, non-technical people will struggle with any editor. I mean, how do you expect her to do layout?? How do you expect her to edit the templates? How do you expect her to publish the site from her local machine to the server that's hosting the website?
Come on man, I know these things seem common sense to us, but really, every non-techy person around me that I can think of wouldn't have the least clue about where to begin with any of this, even my sister who knows how to use photoshop wouldn't have a clue about running a website. (I'd have to spend a lot of time tutoring her, and even then I'm not sure she'd get it).
Just give her a CMS or a blogging application like wordpress or the like (I assume you'll have to set it up for her).
EDIT
Even if you do find a good-easy-friendly editor, what about deploying her changes to the server? The problem is not only editing HTML, but running a website, managing content on it.
If your mother's business is a legitimate business that she gets her living from, wouldn't she want a professional to do it? A non-professional website, like hers is BOUND to look, is only going to make her business seem unprofessional.
If it is not a "real" business, but more like a hobby business, perhaps she would get what she needs from www.blogspot.com [or Wordpress], which is very simple to use.
I've tried this a few times with non-technical folks. For those that can handle desktop software, I use RapidWeaver (OS X only). (I don't set up non-technical folks with Windows PCs.)
But more often, I've found that something like WordPress works better. They can easily edit the site online and it's limited functionality keeps them from getting confused.
if she isn't a geek, maybe a simple cms is sufficient for her. editing html, and layout stuff can be pretty painful, as well as managing files on a server for the average user. i'd go for wordpress, which has simple admin ui, and since it's php, can be run on almost every hosting service you find. Also, using a widget-based sidebar and page layout makes her able to do almost anything she could do with an html editor (of which, imo dreamweaver is by far the best) - and even more! just think about already done plugins available through a simple plugin manager! i think there is a german translation available, too. (i found a hungarian one, there must be a german as well)
WordPress could be a good option and it has some options to install in German and other languages. See WordPress in Your Language for more information.
What about an online web site creator, something like GoDaddy's Website Tonight? It provides templates and lots of support for a simple web site. There is a monthly fee, but it's quite reasonable, and could be a good solution for someone who doesn't want to delve into the complexities.
I don't know if they offer a German UI, but it might be worth checking out.
Have you tried http://goodbarry.com ?
It’s an easy to use CMS focused to business owners.
As hasen j said: “The problem is not only editing HTML, but running a website, managing content on it.”
However I’m not sure if there is a German translation.
Movable Type is another option for a simple CMS.
My mother is using TextMate. I set her up with Subversion, so to publish her site she just commits and a hook on the Subversion server will update the site. The big benefit here is that when something goes wrong I have a record of every change she made which makes it much easier to sort out. There's some simple PHP (that was what was easily supported on her MacBook for testing and on the webhost she uses) to minimize the boilerplate stuff on each page.
CushyCMS is the only thing I would let a totally non-tech person near. It's very easy to setup an manage, and there's very little chance she can actually break stuff.
Dot Net Nuke, just copy, install and a way she goes.....