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I've never used WordPress.org before. I'm wondering if I can convert this html website that I have to wordpress exactly the same?
https://reporting.pacificamerican.org/pas/
And if this website is a wordpress site, does it means that I don't have to go into the codes if I want to update my content? Because right now with html site it takes more time to update all the contents.
Thank you.
Yes, you can, but looking at the content I wouldn't say it looks like a great idea. Mostly because of how static the current content seems to be.
Pros:
It looks like you are about to add a blog-page. WordPress does make such re-occuring content easy.
It looks like you have repeated the menu on every page. (If you change the menu on one page, then you have to makes changes to all pages as well?). WordPress would help with that and let you use one menu everywhere. But there are also tons of easier methods to accomplish the same thing without WordPress. (For example <?php include 'menu.php';?> using PHP).
Cons:
The "multiple sub-pages in one page" that you are using doesn't play naturally with WordPress. Absolutely possible yes, perhaps not even difficult, but not out-of-the-box for sure.
The time it would take to edit pages would likely not change as drastic as you hope. I believe that the current content looks so static that anyone with a bit HTML/CSS knowledge would rather want to edit those static html files over having to click around in the WordPress admin interface.
The scroll-spy, editing tables and things like the yearly admissions does not come naturally either. I can think of a few dozen ways to solve such things with WordPress, but if you are going to do this work yourself, then the WordPress-conversion will take some effort and the results will not always be as pretty as you might imagine.
You'll definitely take a performance hit over using only static html. (But that is true for any CMS/framework)
My suggestion would be to first look at your current workflow. Perhaps look at an IDE that can upload with a click or on save, have history so you can back up when things break, and predefined snippets that make static content changes easy, (and of course code syntax highlighting!).
What tools are you using now?
Also remember that you are asking on a coding-site. Not many here would opt to use the WordPress editor over simply editing html-files. In fact, I dare to say many here carries a deep grudge after having to work around some specific quirks in the WP editor (aka tinyMCE).
Sure, you could replicate the layouts.
Sure, your content would be editable with just a form.
It would take a lot of effort, but certainly doable.
I am attempting to learn css attribute relationships. With my current knowledge, I would venture to say that there are only about 30 or so attributes that the majority of web pages are built around, but how you match them up is what gives one page a cleaner look, better functionality, and an overall better experience for the user. Currently I am getting feedback that the 'only' way to learn is by a combination of experience and looking at examples of implementation(s) on webpages that have the feature(s) I want, and trying to replicate. I think this is too time consuming, and not an effective tool for someone wanting to develop a solid approach to CSS. Is/are there tools that you have used similar to any of the below that help you understand the interaction of the attributes for basic manipulation of semantic markup?
Current tools that have GUIs to allow quick feedback of attribute/element manipulation:
JSFIDDLE : An online platform for viewing HTML, JS, CSS, and the result in one window, allowing for common shared code.
Button Maker : Dynamic CSS/HTML generation for a graphical button.
SourceTree : For understanding repository structure for Git,
Mercurial and SVN version control systems.
Eclipse : An IDE with 'desktop' organization of multiple implementations, code, and information panes.
CodingBat : An online console for learning Python or Java by 'snippet' coding and viewing results of different passed parameters.
Codeyear / CodeAcademy : An online IDE to allow for both 'snippet' coding and viewing CSS/HTML/JS/results in several structured learning paths.
Specifically, I would like to learn the relationships of postion based styles, such as fixed, float and such.
For me, the best way to learn: Think up of something you want to make. Make it. Go through the process of finding out what works and what doesn't. Figure out how to fix it. Fix it. Be amazed at how crappy the result is. Repeat.
You won't learn all the little tricks by looking at independent examples. You won't learn much by "looking at" anything. Do it. Once you have a basic grasp of what's going on, make something. Copy something. Time consuming? yes, sure... if you say so. Experience comes with time.
The thing with copying other people is that you don't know the process they went through. Why did they do something a certain way? Is it even right? Just because somebody put it online doesn't mean it's any good.
So specifically, what function do you want to implement? Google that, read all the different ways people do it. Find one that you like, implement it. Tweak it. If you don't understand, look into that.
I think there's a term for when you're trying to find something, you go from one (related) thing to another until you forget your original issue... That's bad when you need to be productive. It's perfectly fine here, where you just want to learn everything.
For some things, it's important to have structure. Once you learn the basics, I think having some sort of structure or system will just slow you down. I like to go at it and solve a problem, learning as I go. When I'm trying to figure something out, I have nothing but Notepad and Chrome with a lot of Google search results tabs open. You don't need all these GUI tools. Sure they might make your development go a little faster with their auto complete or error warnings, but what's your rush?
Don't spend so much time finding the perfect set of tools that you never get to the thing you were finding those tools for. Just do it.
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.
While designing my site I am constantly faced with the issue of whether its ok to TAKE ideas and designs from other sites. In some cases there is no distinction in certain aspects. Is there anything ethically wrong with this? Is this expected in the design programming community?
Depends on how much you 'steal'.
Code
If you're ripping off the whole design, then its a bit dodgy. If you like (for example) the Stack Overflow concept of voting up stuff, then steal the concept and use it in a different manner. If you want to know how say the orange highlighting of the up-voted items works, then look at the code. But don't do both and steal both the concept and the design, you'll just create a clone.
Due to the way different web browsers treat CSS and the like, there are often only a very few limited ways to do a particular thing (3-column layouts, etc.). It seems fair enough to blatantly copy in these cases where there is a common way of doing things. Where its something unique, and there's many ways of doing it, it seems a bit more off to blatantly copy.
Graphics
Ripping off graphics - not so okay. Images have been around a lot longer than code so copyright law, etc. probably suits them better. If nothing else you have to contend with possible watermarks or other metadata to identify the original source. It's very easy to check for image stealing, less so for code within a larger block.
I'm a coder, not a designer so what I tend to do is borrow graphics that I like just while mocking up my web-app for internal use. Does that seem fair? I'll change them for newly-designed or paid-for ones before going live. At least that's the idea, though it could be far too easy to forget and use them by accident.
That's the way it works in the newspaper world (well it used to, not sure now with the advent of this there Internet thang): You download as many graphics as you can bother waiting to come over your 57.6k modem; you only pay for the ones you actually publish.
Oh, this is a hard question.
On the one hand stealing is wrong, on the other hand you are obliged to save you employer money by solving a task quickly.
My only advice is:
If it feels wrong in your gut, you probably stole too much.
I think most designers and developers draw a distinction between 'creative inspiration' derived from someone else's work and blatant plagiarism.
I wouldn't think twice about peeking under the hood to see how someone had done a particularly nifty javascript effect, or implemented a tricky piece of css elegantly, but I'd find it distasteful to blatantly cut and paste that same code for use in my own development.
I'm not learning anything by just grabbing and reusing - although I think it's fairly standard to have the same code to hand as a rough scaffold from which to explore my own way of implementation. I think that's the way a lot of people work.
I am a web developer, not a designer. As such, I have a sense of taste, but not the ability to come up with something wholly on my own. As a matter of ethics, everything commercial or with the expectation of serious traffic that I do, I will hire a designer. They need to eat too, and there is something wrong with making money off of others work and not compensating them for it.
If it is small, personal, or an internal throwaway type thing, I will rip off things like color scheme and/or layout. Technically you could say this is stealing, but I think of it more as "imitation being the sincerest form of flattery" thing. I don't feel that bad about it since there isn't really any money to be made in it.
I think its ok to steal ideas, but not to steal code.
This is how a lot of design is accomplished. Except it's obscured by lots of lifts, not a single wholesale lift.
Stealing resources (graphics, code) is not really OK if they're not specifically marked as free/open/creative-commons/etc. Stealing design and layout is a bit sketchy if you're just xeroxing the same layout using your own code -- using someone else's design as a starting point is one thing, but don't just recreate their design verbatim. Stealing snippets of code for specific bits of functionality is fine (IMHO) since even if you grabbed a reference manual to learn it from scratch you'd end up with the same thing. (Think: javascript for changing an button image on mouse-hover)
Having said all that, imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Don't steal resources, but using other sites as "influence" should be OK. Or, if in doubt, ask the owner of the site you intend to use as reference/influence.
It's almost like everyone answering this question forgot what it was like to work with web pages between 1995 and 2002 or so. Stealing was a way of life for tons of designers during that period. The key was, and still is, to take only what you need, and to make sure that you understand it well enough to make it from scratch the next time. Who knows, you might improve something in the process.
There's an old saying I was once told: Good designers create. Great designers steal.
That said however, you should never blatantly rip off code if you can avoid it. Look at it, understand it, rewrite it (or improve it, if possible; even if it's only something like using what you find are better variable names) but never just copy and paste. Same goes for layouts; take the layout and modify it to suit your needs - it might end up looking similar (look at all of the Basecamp-style clones out there as far as UI goes) and that's no big deal at all; plenty of sites look similar. The key is to go into the situation looking for inspiration and not some code to yoink. If you can use the code as-is or with little modification then you really have no problems, but it shouldn't be your intention to find someone else's code and rip it off.
It's a sliding scale. Borrowing just an idea is one thing, if you're incorporating it into the rest of your existing design, not just wholesale copying an idea. Snagging a idea for a design element is fine, copying a whole design exactly is not. As you borrow more and more of a design, it gets into the not acceptable category. Copying directly is also another factor. If you see something you like and reimplement it for yourself, that is typically fine. But doing a direct copy of code, images, or css not so much.
For the most part, ideas are fine to take and implement. If people couldn't take existing ideas and expand them or re-implement them, we'd never have gotten out of the dark ages.
If you feel the need to steal code because you can't code HTML/CSS well or don't have an eye for design, steal from a place that explicitly permits you to use their design/code, like OSWD. In general, stealing HTML is fine, but ripping off CSS wholesale is a no-no. Just because you can easily view the CSS source doesn't mean that it's ok to just copy and paste it.
Don't steal graphics, period. Especially things like photos and logos and icons. If you need that sort of thing, purchase stock photography or take your own photos.
When in doubt, ask the owner of the site.
Stealing code or designs is immoral and in some cases illegal.
Taking inspiration or copying functionality is less of a problem. For example, at some point in time someone realized that putting a "Forgot Password?" link next to all login forms is a good idea, now everyone does it. It's not theft it's just replicating a good idea.
I'm not a web developer, but I might have some insight that will help as well. My team has created several applications that have served as the starting point for other applications delivered to various customers.
The successful derivatives were those in which the developers took the time to learn the architecture and why things were the way they were. They then took the more crusty parts and rewrote them and in general expanded and improved the architecture.
Invariably, when a team simply took the existing project and tried to 'brand it' or copy it for a customer without actually figuring out the systems, they either created poor implementations of the extensions or had the project fail outright.
I realize this is a bit off the main topic of the ethical issues address by others here just fine, but my bottom line is that pure theft usually costs you more time than it saves.
Although I've done programming, I'm not a programmer. I've recently agreed to coordinate getting a Website up for a club. The resources are--me, who has done Web content maintenance (putting content into HTML and ColdFusion templates via a gatekeeper to the site itself; doing simple HTML and XML coding); a serious Web developer who does database programming, ColdFusion, etc., and talks way over the heads of the rest of us; two designers who use Dreamweaver; the guy who created the original (and now badly broken) site in Front Page and wants to use Expression Web; and assorted other club members who are even less technically inclined.
What we need up first is some text and graphics (a gorgeous design has been created in Dreamweaver), some links (including to existing PDF newsletters for download), and maybe hooking up an existing Blogspot blog. Later (or earlier if it's not hard), we may add mouseover menus to the links, a gallery, a calendar, a few Mapquest hotlinks, and so on.
My question--First, is there any real problem with sticking with HTML and jpegs for the initial site? Second, for the "later" part of the site development, what's the simplest we can go with? Third, are there costs in doing this the simple way that will make us regret it down the road? Also, is there a good site/resource where I can learn more about this from a newbie perspective?
If you don't require any dynamic content, heck, if you don't plan on editing the content more than once a week, I'd say stick to basic HTML.
Later, you'd probably want a basic, no-fuss and easily installable CMS. The brand really depends on the platform (most likely PHP/Rails/ASP), but most of them can be found by typing " CMS" into Google. Try prefixing it with "free" or "open source" if you want.
I'm pretty sure you can do all this for absolutely free. Most PHP and Ruby CMS's are free and web hosting is free/extremely cheap if you're not demanding.
And last/best tip: Find someone who has done this before, preferably more than once. He'll probably set you up so you never have to look at anything more complicated than a WYSIWYG editor.
Plain old HTML is fine, just as long as you don't use tags like blink and marquee.
I personally love tools like CityDesk.
And I'm not just plugging Joel. (There are others out there in this class I'm sure.) The point is they make making a static website very easy:
The structure is just a filesystem structure
pages have templates to consolidate formatting
all resources are contained in one file
easy and fast Preview and Publish functions
For a dynamic collaborative site, I would just install one of many open source CMSs available on shared hosting sites.
If you're familiar with html/javascript basics I'd look into a CMS - wordpress, drupal, joomla, nuke, etc. All of these are free. Very often your web hosting company will install one of these by default which takes all of the hard part out of your hands. Next is just learning to customize the system and there's tons of docs out there for any of those systems.
All that being said there is noting wrong with good old fashioned html.
In addition to some of the great content management systems already mentioned, consider cms made simple.
It makes it very easy to turn a static site into a content managed site (which sounds like exactly what you might need to do in the future), and the admin area is very easy to use. Our clients have found it much simpler to use than the likes of Joomla.
It's also free and open source.
Good luck!
There's no reason to not go with plain old HTML and JPGs if you don't know any server side scripting languages. Also, once you want to get more advanced, most cheap hosting services have tools that can be installed with one click, and provide things like blogs, photo galleries, bulletin boards (PHPBB), and even content management tools like Joomla.
I had the same problem myself, I was just looking for something really easy to smash together a website quickly. First I went with just plain old HTML, but then I realised a simple CMS would be better.
I went for Wordpress. Wordpress is mostly known as a blogging platform, but in my opinion it is really great as a deadly simple CMS as well.
why not simply use Google pages?
Here is an example of a website I did, takes about 2 hours, easy to maintain (not that I do (-: ) and FREE.
I think that suggesting you mess with HTML for what you need is crazy!
Plain HTML is great, gives you the most control. If you want to make updating a bit easier though, you could use SSI. Most servers have this enabled. It basically let's you attach one file to many pages.
For example, you could have your menu in navigation.html and every page would include this file. That way you wouldn't have to update this one file on every page each time you need to update.
<!--#include virtual="navigation.html" -->
I agree with the other commenters that a CMS might be useful to you, however as I see it, probably a solution like Webby might do it for you. It generates plain HTML pages based on Templates. Think about it as a "webpage preprocessor" which outputs plain HTML files. It has most of the advantages of using a server-based CMS, but without a lot of load on the server, and making it easy for you to change stuff on any of the templates you might use.
It's fine
Rails (or purchase / use a CMS)
Not unless you start becoming crazy-popular
It really depends on what you go with for 2. Rails has a plethora of tutorials on the net and any product you go with will have its own community etc.
To be perfectly honest though, if the dynamic part is someone elses blog and you move the gallery out into flikr you may find that you can actually live with large parts of it being static HTML for a very long time.
If a to Implement a website With User Profiles/Logins, Extensions, Gallery's etc s a Newbi then a CMS like Joomla, Etc are good , but Else if you presently have only Static Content then Its good to go with Good Old HTML, About JPEG , I though Presently Its better to use PNG or GIF as its Less Bulky.
Also About you Query About Shifting to Server Scripts , When you have Database Driven Material or When you have Other Things that Require Advanced Prog Languages , Just use PHP Scripts inside PHP , and Rename teh File as a PHP, Thats IT, No Loss to you HTML Data.....
Do Go Ahead and Launch you Site ......
Dude, you're talking about HTML, obviously you'll be styling your content with CSS. Wait till you run into IE issues and god forbid your client wants ie6 compatibility.
Go with the HTML for now, I'm sure you guys will hack it through. Our prayers are with you.
Personally, I'd never use JPEG images on a website, mainly because of three reasons:
JPEGs often contains artifacts.
Quality is often proportional
with filesize.
Does not support
alpha transparency.
That said, I'd recommend you to use PNGs for images since it's lossless and a 24-bit palette (meaning full colors + alpha transparency). The only quirk is that IE6 and below does not support native alpha for PNGs, however this could be resolved by running a javascript which would fix this issue.
As for designing a website, there's both pros and cons for this. I suggest you read through:
37 Signal's Why We Skip Photoshop
Jeff Croft's Why We Don't Skip Photoshop
As for newbie resources, I'd recommend you flip through the pages at W3 Schools.