Be Excellent To Each Other

Hey guys.

Right, I would like some suggestions for what to do with my SavyGamer.

It started out as just a blog, but now it's a lot bigger than that. I now have a podcast, reviews, opinion pieces and news all mixed in with the bargains, which are the most important part of it.

(I think) It's pretty much grown beyond what blogger can offer me. I've had a look at wordpress, but I really don't like it. It feels like at every stage they want me to throw money at them, and feels really restricted.

Here's the kind of features that are really important to me, in a new site design:

• I don't want any advertising on the site anywhere. That includes stuff like "design provided by *name*" and "Hosting provided by *name*"
• I was to be able to sort posts into different RSS feeds. One feed for everything, one feed for podcasts, one feed for reviews, one feed for editorials, then feeds for bargains - one feed for all bargains, and then platform specific bargain feeds too. If any way to allow custom feeds, so lets say someone wanted "PS3 bargains + podcast" in one feed, that would be perfect, but I don't know if that exists.
• I would like a navigation menu at the top that has drop down menu's similar to this, one button for "Home", one for "bargains", with the platforms in the drop down box, one for "Reviews", one for "podcast", one for "about" and one for "contact".
• The bargains would all be listed similarly to how they are now (link in the sig), although the reviews might be better listed in an archive format.
• I want it to be pretty as hell. Clean and easy to navigate quickly, and also fast. Having the good stuff of web2.0 without the bad would be nice.
• I like open source.

I don't actually know if all of those criteria are possible to satisfy with free solutions, but it is really important to me that it's both free, and has no advertising. I am not completely averse to getting some hosting, but I would prefer not to if possible. From what I understand I need a site design, hosting and a content management system, but I'm not sure if that's right, and indeed which ones would be the best for me.

Basically, I know very little about this kind of stuff, and I bet someone here can either tell me what I know, or link to a good tutorial, and probably provide me with some good alternatives to blogger.

So...suggestions?

I'm not seeing where you're encountering advertising with wordpress tbh.

I'd say that Wordpress is exactly what you need. I'm not sure where it's asking you to pay for it. Mine hasn't.

Getting hosting will vastly expand your options, and the flexibility of what you can do with it. It doesn't have to be expensive. Someone on here resells hosting in fact... And I may be in a position to do that early next year too.

I'd say you have three obvious choices amongst open source CMSs. Wordpress is the most prominent pure blogging system, and my favourite blogging platform full stop. It's flexible, but still designed as a blog, which hampers some of the ways you can bend it to you will. There is also Movable Type, which is similar to Wordpress but wasn't (until recently) Open Source so doesn't have as strong a developer following.

Then there are two packages designed to be more generic and flexible -- they can be used for blogs, or news and information sites, or forums, or portals, or whatever. These are Joomla and Drupal. They are more effort to set up but will give you more options down the road. Either of the two would be a fine choice but I prefer Drupal; I think it has marginally better documentation and more developers working on it (which translates to more plugins and modules for you to work with). I use Drupal to run eggwan.com and Wordpress for my blog.

I guess it comes down to a question of how seriously you want to take it and how technical you are.

I heard there was a site that was to be made in Joomla. I wonder what happened to it...

I am officially on this in a week or two.

Give me account synchronisation.

I thought you didn't want that yet?
That's what someone said at some point, I'm sure.

Well the last mention of that was here. I did start doing a few more bits after that thread but doing website stuff at work kills my enthusiasm by the time I get home. Work website is Joomla, Intranet is soon to be Joomla and my own sites are Joomla-based too.. Joomla coming out of my ears.

I assume Lewie is referring to the free wordpress.com hosting service which puts Google ads on your blog and charges extra for certain features (more hosting space, custom themes, no ads, etc.)

Ah.

You're not going to get rid of the first one unless you do the design yourself, and you're not going to get rid of the second one unless you do the hosting yourself.