Be Excellent To Each Other

Afternoon chums, I need advice.

My business website is based on this template I purchased a couple of years ago:

http://allwebcodesign.com/templates/C11dmU/

I customised it by hand and stuck a static image where those clouds are. It looked reasonable at the time and client feedback was good (it looks more business orientated than many of my arty fart competitors so I'm told).

2 years on and I feel it might be time to update the site. With so much talk of CMS systems these days I guess I need to consider if I just buy another template from the same people and tart it up, or do I go CMS?

People go on about Joomla, but the sites always seem to look identikit. I do already have Wordpress on my site for my popular (subs please check) corporate blog and I don't want to interfere with that in any way. I also need to be able to integrate video in and have static landing pages.

As I say a CMS looks appealing but I'm somewhat old skool. I worry I don't understand how the Wordpress part of my site works whereas I'm 100% happy with the standard html parts.

HAYLP! (copyright Your Sinclair 1992 - Ed)

I suspect a lot of people are going to say "Wordpress"..

I have/had the same dilemma and have been putting off changing over. Not helped by my bloody-minded insistance on hosting it myself which means dicking about with databases more than I really like to.

I'd make it myself, but then I enjoy doing that sort of thing. As you may have noticed.

Are you going to be changing the content much?

This is the key. If you're changing the content loads, but in a structured way, a CMS is a real help. If it'll be fairly static, or you'll be making changes that are complex/custom, then do it by hand.

I don't like Wordpress. I'm just browsing some of the so called "best" Wordpress sites and they all look like shit Wordpress sites. I do my blog on Wordpress and I find it pretty hateful. It does hide all the backend from you though.

My content is pretty much sorted. I just want a better site without too much dicking around.

The site remains pretty static. Occasionally I'll add a new video or update a page. That's it really (aside from the blog which I want to leave alone).

Write it yourself.

I guess then that I need to find some templates. That site I linked to has nice structured templates that someone old school like me can happily tinker with. But they are all a little samey and uninspiring.

Probably the best way. But I prefer to work from a template as I have done before as my days of slaving over Photoshop are long gone.

I'd throw a little money at a designer, to be honest.

They are all cunts though. And specifically, they are all cunts who buy templates and then charge 5 grand for their time.

+ I'm kicking my heels as its August.

Is there a way of combining both? I.e., get it set up nicely by hand and then (potentially someone else) editing the pages in future using a wysiwyg type thing without much scope of buggering it all up?

I have been using this CMS as well but am vaguely thinking of trying something else:
http://www.razorcms.co.uk/

MR WHAT-ARE-YOU-GOING-TO-DO FACE

Okay, let's look for nice templates. GO!

I'd be inclined to agree. Or some sort of monkey, at least.

Get them to build you a mainly static site, with a mini CMS to quickly add videos to a section. It won't be a hell of a lot of work.

Only £64!

I will happily PM the details of my current site to anyone who can suggest a template or CMS that will bring it all up to date.

I'd happily bill £1k for that if I were doing it from scratch, to be honest.

Thing is, really, I need to be doing it myself as it's August and as usual there isn't alot of work on. So the whole reason I've started to think about it is to give me something to do.

And I'd probably bill even less than that. Sadly, I don't have any time, nor would I want to work with anyone from here.

PM me Chinster, as long as you're aware that I'm shit at web design.

Half the battle is getting good graphic design really. Any template, however snazzy, stands an excellent chance of looking like dogshit if you are forcing graphic elements into it that weren't part of the original design.

You don't want to be meeting people from the internet in real life. They are likely to lure you to a remote farmhouse and repeatedly kill you.

How come? I've done some (heavily reduced, by the way :wub:) work for a few people from the forum now.

Or do you just take the money and run

Same reason I don't do work for friends, really: I don't want to mix work with friends or family. In an ideal world, everything would go smoothly, but the stakes are always higher with people you know.

I'd be happy to collaborate on projects with people I know, but I wouldn't get to a situation where money is involved.

Hah!

I'm happy to sell shit I don't want to you Poles

http://www.freewebsitetemplates.com/preview/djclub/

I FUCKING MADE THAT!

Thieving cunts.

[edit]They've drawn nipples onto the model

I've often wondered if those template sites used stolen stuff.

Holy shit! I'd have laughed if they'd left the photo of you looking like a mental on there.

I like the fact they kept the really badly-cropped out woman at the bottom.

She looks cropped in all the right places to me.

I would offer to help you out Chinny, but I'm still trying to sort out this fucking reply-to-all button

I'm about to embark on creation of a website for the company I work for. You tell me, silverlight in asp.net site or asp.met mvc2? I don't have a Danny la rue as I'm a winforms, now wpf/ECG man.

How hard to create a functional corporate, order system, website?

Love
Paul.

Tricky to answer that unless you tell us what sort of thing you expect the website to do.

I've got to confess that I'll have a hard time recommending Silverlight, though. Does it have to be asp?

Exsting desktop apps have c# classes relevant to all systems so wanted to edit all in vs 2010. Already have some wcf services knocking around also.

We are big bill gates lovers.

I'm quite a fan of ASP.NET MVC. I wouldn't recommend it for every site, mind. What are your requirements?

I'd happily fleece help you out with any graphics for your site if Grim... is coding it for you, Chinny.

Ha! Chinny is doing this one himself, so you'll have to fleece him direct.

The site is to enable users to raise order requests, review orders, track orders, etc... Amazon like I suppose.

If there's a fair bit of database nonsense involved and a need for dynamic pages, ASP.NET MVC is very much your friend. Everything is so quick to set up it's unbelievable.

I'm struggling with where what fits in where in the architecture at the mo, that and trying in vain to get a fucking gradient on the home page I'm trying to cobble together!!!!! Arse the in pain........

View = presentation yeah? Aspx pages????
Model = Class structure + business logic?
Controller = DB access code and the rest?

Does this sound right tracks? Where would my WCF services sit in this format?

Cheers

Paul.

Oh right, well the offer still stands if you'd like me to produce any graphics to personalise a template to suit your corporate style, Chinny.

I'm aiming to do it myself, but thanks for the offer. The main reason is its August and I have the time so I should be doing it myself really. I used to do alot of web design but that was back in the "dark times"*. In recent years I just preferred to get a template and then tart it up.

I am veering towards a Joomla site rather than hand coding. The reason is I might have reason in the future to be adding extra pages and stuff rather than leave the site static. It should also be less intensive to setup and maintain.

I have been looking for the last hour or so for templates but Google has not been my friend. Is there a decent template place anyone can recommend as most of them seem to be shysters are flogging the same old crap or want you to join their "club"?

Is it easy to stick video into Joomla?




* A time when tables had just been accepted and frames were despised and considered to be a new abomination.

The best joomla templates can be found at Rocket Theme. I've been a member on there for a while - I use a template of theirs for my work's site and for consolemad too. They come with enough options to tweak to differentiate from other sites but plenty of flexibility to butcher them to make them look unique.

I forget which video player I've used but it's probably the one on here - it has some other good joomla extensions too.

If you're going down the Joomla route, just check if your hosting has something like Fantastico/Softaculous - if it does, you can install it with a few clicks.

In my searching, this software has had a few mentions:

http://www.artisteer.com/?p=home

Anyone used it? Seems to get good reviews.

I've been on their site earlier. The whole "club" thing seems confusing. Presumably I find a template I like and then join at the appropriate level? They don't make it very clear.

You just join at the lowest level ($50) and you can download any of their stuff. You can only legally install it on one site though. If/when you renew, you gain an entitlement if you want it on another site.

Ahhhh.

They don't exactly explain themselves well*. Cheers.

Installing Joomla won't break my Wordpress blog based on the same site will it? Think I asked this earlier. The blog is tucked away in a /blog directory.


* Actually they do, just not from the purchase page i was on.

Nah.. you should be fine as long you don't install it in the same directory as your WP site. Joomla creates a few directories, but 'blog' isn't one of them, so it shouldn't overwrite anything.

I now have a Joomla install running locally on my Macbook. I have also paid for 1 site from the Rocket Theme website.

So progress this far has been quite easy. Not quite sure how to transport the site I build locally to online but I guess that will become apparent.