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Advice needed on new web site


Steve Burke

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I would used a CMS (Content Management System) like Drupal

 

This site is Drupal based.

http://bikesgearmore.com/

The problem isn't what people don't know, it's what they know that just ain't so.
Vaut mieux ne rien dire et passer pour un con que de parler et prouver que t'en est un!
Mi, ch’fais toudis à m’mote

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Drupal shpoople. Joomlas the daddy.

 

Nick i know steves needs were simple which is why i suggested cms made simple. its a nice balance of advanced & simple. plus its free.

 

as standard its features are pretty basic with the obvious features such as pages, image uploads and a few more things. from a business expansion side of things its a very nice starter platform you can take anywhere you want.

 

was just a thought for steve to think over :)

 

I get what you mean about the custom code thing but I meant if he bought a cms they would most likely provide it as a service on their hosting and not something you could install on any host you wanted. they should be avoided.

 

steve, if you pay someone for coding make sure you get your coding on a disk, ive worked with scum who will hold your code and hosting to ransom, i fired one of my guys over it years ago when he refused to give editable flash files and access to ftp so the poor customer had no choice but to use us and i didnt run things like that, if you pay for something its yours end of imo.

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Owner of Tacklesack.co.uk


Moderator at The-Pikers-Pit.co.uk

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Drupal shpoople. Joomlas the daddy.

 

Nick i know steves needs were simple which is why i suggested cms made simple. its a nice balance of advanced & simple. plus its free.

 

as standard its features are pretty basic with the obvious features such as pages, image uploads and a few more things. from a business expansion side of things its a very nice starter platform you can take anywhere you want.

 

was just a thought for steve to think over :)

 

I get what you mean about the custom code thing but I meant if he bought a cms they would most likely provide it as a service on their hosting and not something you could install on any host you wanted. they should be avoided.

 

steve, if you pay someone for coding make sure you get your coding on a disk, ive worked with scum who will hold your code and hosting to ransom, i fired one of my guys over it years ago when he refused to give editable flash files and access to ftp so the poor customer had no choice but to use us and i didnt run things like that, if you pay for something its yours end of imo.

Joomla, that's what I really had in mind, I just could not remember the name.

The problem isn't what people don't know, it's what they know that just ain't so.
Vaut mieux ne rien dire et passer pour un con que de parler et prouver que t'en est un!
Mi, ch’fais toudis à m’mote

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steve, if you pay someone for coding make sure you get your coding on a disk, ive worked with scum who will hold your code and hosting to ransom, i fired one of my guys over it years ago when he refused to give editable flash files and access to ftp so the poor customer had no choice but to use us and i didnt run things like that, if you pay for something its yours end of imo.

Excellent advice! Thanks very much.

Wingham Specimen Coarse & Carp Syndicates www.winghamfisheries.co.uk Beautiful, peaceful, little fished gravel pit syndicates in Kent with very big fish. 2017 Forum Fish-In Sat May 6 to Mon May 8. Articles http://www.anglersnet.co.uk/steveburke.htm Index of all my articles on Angler's Net

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Nick, thanks in particular for the advice of having the hosting separate to the developer.

 

In fact, thanks to all for a lot of valuable advice! I'm just reading the whole topic again.

Wingham Specimen Coarse & Carp Syndicates www.winghamfisheries.co.uk Beautiful, peaceful, little fished gravel pit syndicates in Kent with very big fish. 2017 Forum Fish-In Sat May 6 to Mon May 8. Articles http://www.anglersnet.co.uk/steveburke.htm Index of all my articles on Angler's Net

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Firstly, many thanks to all for the valuable help so far!

 

Guys, it may help if I note some of the features that would be useful in case it limits the choice.

 

1) The biggest problem we have at present is the lack of flexibility, especially the limit on number of pages and the number of photos per page. I assume that any new web site will be pretty much unlimited and that it would be easy for us to add new pages or split existing ones?

 

2) Not only would it be useful for guests to click on say a flag to get the prices in the currency of their choice, but it would also be useful for at least the home page, how to order and terms of business etc to be in French or German on clicking the appropriate flag. Peggy speaks these languages very well and a lot of our business is with French and German customers. We'd like the option for the entire site to be translated at some stage. I don't mean that the user uses Google Translate etc, but that they see it in French or German by clicking a flag at the top of the page.

 

3) Some of our customers have very slow internet connections so the site must load very quickly. Presumably it's easy to be able to click on the photo of a paperweight and get an enlarged picture or a different angle without slowing down the main page?

 

Once again, thanks for all the help.

Wingham Specimen Coarse & Carp Syndicates www.winghamfisheries.co.uk Beautiful, peaceful, little fished gravel pit syndicates in Kent with very big fish. 2017 Forum Fish-In Sat May 6 to Mon May 8. Articles http://www.anglersnet.co.uk/steveburke.htm Index of all my articles on Angler's Net

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Firstly, many thanks to all for the valuable help so far!

 

Guys, it may help if I note some of the features that would be useful in case it limits the choice.

 

1) The biggest problem we have at present is the lack of flexibility, especially the limit on number of pages and the number of photos per page. I assume

that any new web site will be pretty much unlimited and that it would be easy for us to add new pages or split existing ones?

 

A CMS (content management system) as we have been discussing is what you would want in order to do that an off the shelf one like cms made simple, joomla, drupal or mambo will not limit anything at all its yours to do with as you see fit. they can be sooooooooo flexible that the only limit is your imagination, sounds cheesy i know :rolleyes:

 

if you go bespoke per Nicks suggestion (not going off the shelf) i would say its verry important to find out if you can take the CMS to another host, if not am i limited in the number of pages i can add or the amount of images i can upload.

 

webstal seems to be a cms but as its webstals own and on their hosting they appear to be limiting you ? Possibly trying to get more money for more functionality ? ive found this the case with a lot of non-off the shelf solutions :(

 

 

2) Not only would it be useful for guests to click on say a flag to get the prices in the currency of their choice, but it would also be useful for at least the home page, how to order and terms of business etc to be in French or German on clicking the appropriate flag. Peggy speaks these languages very well and a lot of our business is with French and German customers. We'd like the option for the entire site to be translated at some stage. I don't mean that the user uses Google Translate etc, but that they see it in French or German by clicking a flag at the top of the page.

 

A good CMS will allow multiple currencies and conversions, if it doesnt you can bet that some clever dude has come up with a module to do just that.

 

for full site translation, google provides a handy little widget that can be discreet for translating all your text, though almost all the good content management systems have multiple language capabilities but you must enter the translations yourself, a drop down box or flag is then displayed for the user to view the page in that language.

 

3) Some of our customers have very slow internet connections so the site must load very quickly. Presumably it's easy to be able to click on the photo of a paperweight and get an enlarged picture or a different angle without slowing down the main page?

 

Once again, thanks for all the help.

 

all good content management systems upload the large image and creates a thumbnail with the ability to then click the thumbnail to enlarge. joomla, cms made simple and drupal do this.

 

hope this is helping and not confusing matters mate, i know it can be a lot to take in.

 

 

if you want a gander at this CMS stuff there is a website which lets you try them out on their website to see which suits your needs.

 

http://www.opensourcecms.com/

Owner of Tacklesack.co.uk


Moderator at The-Pikers-Pit.co.uk

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  • 2 weeks later...

The only problem with those pre-build CMS systems is that you have to constantly update them due to security flaws in the code.

Take Joomla for an example, most of their security updates are slow to be completed.

 

The last 5 reports as an example

  • Reported Date: 2013-February-26
  • Fixed Date: 2013-April-24

-----------------------------------------------------

  • Reported Date: 2013-March-29
  • Fixed Date: 2013-April-24

-----------------------------------------------------

  • Reported Date: 2013-March-9
  • Fixed Date: 2013-April-24

-----------------------------------------------------

  • Reported Date: 2013-February-15
  • Fixed Date: 2013-April-24

-----------------------------------------------------

  • Reported Date: 2013-February-18
  • Fixed Date: 2013-April-24

Notice how long between the report and the fix?

 

If you have custom written code by a reputable coder then that coder should use safe and secure coding techniques, plus the code will not be "open source" and not view able by anyone who does not have access to the files.

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Cheers, Si!

Wingham Specimen Coarse & Carp Syndicates www.winghamfisheries.co.uk Beautiful, peaceful, little fished gravel pit syndicates in Kent with very big fish. 2017 Forum Fish-In Sat May 6 to Mon May 8. Articles http://www.anglersnet.co.uk/steveburke.htm Index of all my articles on Angler's Net

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Quite an interesting viewpoint on static html, none CMS sites, fairly well reflects my thinking:

 

http://ryanhayes.net/blog/why-you-should-build-your-website-using-static-html-files/

 

And most of the benefits can be obtained utilising a database to store the info and then using php to generate new (static) pages anytime data changes - and if anything needs to be truly dynamic (perhaps exchange rates) that is easy to include too...

Nick

 

 

...life

what's it all about...?

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