A while ago, as in years, I made a quick html site for a mate of a mate. Turns out it was the most updated site I’ve ever made. The site is for some DJ’s in Glasgow who have gigs every month and wanted to post up the event details and posters. As much as I didn’t mind doing this, if I was away for the weekend then the new event didn’t get posted for like 5 days. So the solution a CMS (Content Management System).
I’ve only really used two content management systems, Joomla and WordPress. The main difference being the modules/widgets. I find Joomla much easier to add side bars, content bottoms, content tops and rotating headers. Though WordPress is easier to show someone how to update their news page if that is the main purpose of the site. So for this DJ site I chose WordPress.
I basically looked for a shell template with roughly the layout I was looking for and added in bits of my code from the HTML site they currently had. With a bit of plugin searching and some swearing the site began to look something similar to what they had before, but with a bit of a lift obviously. The tricky bit was the Events page. This was the WordPress Post page but I needed it to have forthcoming events, not blog post on it. Now that took a hell of a lot more swearing and Googling to figure that out but I got there in the end.
So from HTML to WordPress in like 40 hours, check out the result – www.depth-charge.co.uk
Should Newbies Learn Static Or Dynamic Website Design?
So i have known HTML for about 5 years now but it was only about 3 years ago that i put together my first decent looking static website, and was only about 10 months ago that i finished my first Joomla! site. It took a good length of time and practise for me to be able to code a site without having to google how to do something or figure out how to fix errors in good old IE, usually the doubling margin that’d buggered everything. Then i wanted a blog. So i installed WordPress in a sub-folder on my site and the long hours of changing it to look like my site began. I didn’t really find it that difficult to customise the look of the theme i had chosen because i knew a fair bit of CSS and a little bit of PHP, so i figured most things out, the hardest bit was breaking up my Photoshop image into images for the theme.
So i have a question -
Should newbie designers be learning how to make basic static websites or just concentrating on how to make dynamic sites?
Some of my friends want me to make them a website, but should i make them a static one which they can then learn to change themselves or should i just focus on learning more PHP and Content Management Systems? Is it worth while learning HTML and CSS from the start and coding basic static sites? As i look about the web i see less and less static sites and more dynamic sites which can be maintained by anyone who’s had a bit of training. You can make sites in Joomla!, Drupal, WordPress, Expression Engine, all of which can be taught to someone with no coding experience.
Let me know what you think the best way forward is for new designers.