Domain name Question

[SgtM]

Congrats dude. Can't wait to see what you do with the site. I had joomla running on my site for a while, but didn't play around with it enough to really get a hang of it. I know .Mal runs his site through Joomla as a CMS, and it looks pretty good. I'm sure he can offer some help. For my current site, http://sgtm.homelinux.com, I just found a template that was nice, and I'm running phpBB for a forum. I don't have that much content, it's just something fun to play with.

I should mention the difference between your site and mine and .Mal's is our servers are at home, and you have a regular web host.

[Crazy Buddhist]

Im not against Microsoft Front Page either, I just remember hearing nothing but criticism of it from my buddies who used to code html. It was prob just anti-microsoft bashing though for all I can remember.

Frontpage is the biggest piece of crapola ever .. dreamweaver even has a "strip unwanted frontpage html" function in it !!!

I once made a ten page static website for someone and stupidly ran it through frontpage. Not having Dreamweaver around I then spent several hours removing the extraneous code by hand.

We're talking four pages of HTML for each page on the site being reduced to about 1/2 a side/one side by the time I was done.


Your buddies were complaining with justification.

[NightrainSrt4]

Thanks guys. Ya I'm glad I went for it. Now I have a lot of work ahead of me to get it where I want to be. I tried again with joomla and trying a template that looked ok, but it just doesn't seem fit for me(and all the templates ive looked at had either names of who created it or whatever which is completely understandable but I want the site to be mine, not have someone elses badge on it). I might look around and try another CSM once I get a couple pages done with dreamweaver.


As for frontpage ya, i looked up why it sucks lol. The coding is bloated like hell and is pretty much optimized only for IE, so firefox users get a slap in the face. Apparently microsoft claims theyve gotten better, but ehh. Ill shy away from Frontpage lol as I haven't touched IE in over 3 or 4 years.

[calumc]

but it just doesn't seem fit for me(and all the templates ive looked at had either names of who created it or whatever which is completely understandable but I want the site to be mine, not have someone elses badge on it)

Why not tweak the hell out of it?
Most people that make templates dont mind you changing altogether as long as you give them credit for the original work.

[NightrainSrt4]

Why not tweak the hell out of it?

Because I can't figure out how to do much of anything in Joomla through the control panel thing. If I could actually figure out how to get through the actual pages and edit things I would. All I can find is how to edit text.

I could try to look through the html/php and change things that way, but as I alluded to in earlier posts I haven't looked at html since I was like 15 or 16. So 4 to 5 years ago. So trying to remember everything is going to take a long time.

I clicked to add the WYSIWYG editor on installation, but I can't find how the hell to use that either, or where to even get to it. Im about to give it another look because theres no point on installing dreamweaver on this laptop as most of my graphics would come from photoshop and quite frankly this laptop isn't up to the task as well as I would like it to be. I'd rather use my desktop, but that is currently dissasembled due to Project: Nightrain paint issues. So I guess I will look through Joomla again and see what I can dig up.

[Crazy Buddhist]

Thanks guys. Ya I'm glad I went for it. Now I have a lot of work ahead of me to get it where I want to be. I tried again with joomla and trying a template that looked ok, but it just doesn't seem fit for me(and all the templates ive looked at had either names of who created it or whatever which is completely understandable but I want the site to be mine, not have someone elses badge on it). I might look around and try another CSM once I get a couple pages done with dreamweaver.

Nightrain,

I've heard seriously good things about Mambo and it's a 2 click install with fantastico on hostmonster. There is an online demo here:

http://www.mamboserver.com/index.php...=35&Itemid=116

If you are ever going to have forums (IMHonestO I think any how-to site is best with them) SMF (Simple Machines Forum) is also a 2 click install and there is an excellent mambo-SMF bridge that integrates the two seamlessly.

If you find mambo works for you, though the learning curve may be steep initially, the work load of maintaining site content later will be fractional and pay it back several times.

Having spent several years in publishing and marketing I can tell you that getting the ground right makes all the difference. It may be that you experiment for a month before turning your mind to "real" work on the site - if that's so it will be a month well spent.

Does dreamweaver effectively do anything a CMS does? Maybe - it's a good three or four years since I used it and it's a great product. The problem with HTML though is it's all static, and although using css you can make site wide design changes, you can't easily undo/change the hand or machine coded html.


Looking forward to seeing the site when it's done dude.



Matthew

[NightrainSrt4]

Thanks CrazyB. I was looking through Fantastico and it had quite a bit of things that you could install easily. I will try mambo. Shoot ill try all of them till I find one that works. Im not afraid of a high learning curve. I just want the ability to change much of everything if I choose and I just didn't find that easily with joomla. It seemed like you were stuck to the template you chose a little too tightly for my liking. In a template, I want one I can build up, not have to break it all down before I build it up. Just feels like wasted time to me.

Thanks, ill look into mambo after classes.

[NightrainSrt4]

Well I tried out Mambo, and it is pretty much like Joomla. But I have found some things a little bit more simple even though much of it looks almost exactly the same.

I still can't figure out how to edit the actual template, as in the pictures and stuff. I can remove buttons/links and all that, but I am bound to the restrictions originally set in the template. Maybe I can make a template in Dreamweaver and then import it into Mambo?

I took down the "currently under construction" page and left my progress up so you guys can look at it and maybe help me figure out how to get rid of some of this stuff/change things. The thing is, I think some of it is static html that I can't get to, like the picture above the top bar.

www.howtofixapc.com

At the very least, I am starting to understand how to use the CSM's a little bit more. I stipped what I didn't want and changed others. This is just playing around trying to get used to it.


Edit: Before I posted this I already had someone else looking at the site(other than me). I just opened the darn thing up so you guys could help me with it lol and someone already found it. Too bad I don't have any content up yet.

[Crazy Buddhist]

I still can't figure out how to edit the actual template, as in the pictures and stuff. I can remove buttons/links and all that, but I am bound to the restrictions originally set in the template. Maybe I can make a template in Dreamweaver and then import it into Mambo?

You will have to go into the css and edit it. It's not hard - there will be tutorials on the web for sure. Also just look at the source code of your page and see what images it's loading then replace them with your own. There is a dreamweaver mambo plugin here but it's $49 and appears to just do the css anyway - maybe nothing you can't learn in a day.




ps some mambo tutorials here:

http://www.mambohut.com/content/section/3/86/

[NightrainSrt4]

Thanks CrazyB. I just was about to post that after looking in the directories that I found the actual pictures that it is putting into the website. I should be able to use photoshop and just change everything and just upload it and keep the same naming scheme they had and it should all work. Tomorrow I am going to give it a shot with just basic stuff and see if it works.

I should be able to just edit everything now that I know where it is. If this works, all I have to do is pick a template that I like where everything is, and then just change all the images and colors and such to what I choose. Cool, I am excited.



Edit: Ya this looks easy now. I am still kinda bound by the basic layout structure of the template, but this is definitely workable. I can do this. I could probably change everything if I understood what the css code meant, but i dont. I could learn though. I think I can do this.