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Conversion
Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 12:23 pm
by tobiasknoll
Hy,
I am now long time using HTML and Javascript. I also have experience in using Joomla-Standard and Setting Up easily usable webapplications. But I have not used PHP directly before, since some weeks ago.
I have now a website I want to rework with ne design and found that using css and especially the include of php makes my life a whole lot easier. But I also have problems now transferring all my pages now to the new php-idea. At the moment I need nothing else than the include of php but I late on want to use more as well. I use it to include the header of each page and a long javascript I am using.
Before I used Frontpage for this website (it is my first real site) and it has grown to about 200 pages and 70MB of content. I could now open all pages change them and change the links from htm to php - but this is quite some work. Also it is then no more possible to change the content as easily anymore as before with Frontpage (I know many people do not like it, but it IS easy to change and work if you just want to have some content).
No I am looking for a onvenient way to handle complex sites with lots of pages in PHP, to enhace them easily - not in sourcecode AND to convert lots of html-pages to php.
I hope this fits to the theory-folder, if not please move it accordingly - thanks.
Thanks for any help, yours Tobias
Re: Conversion
Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 6:29 pm
by alex.barylski
If I understand your requirements correctly.
1. Use a single index.php which pulls content into the page layout and echo's
2. Use .htaccess to feed HTML requests to index.php and solve the problem of converting your links
This is trivial but only if you have understand the concepts and have experience in PHP, etc.
Or you could just manually copy the pages from your web site into a Joomla install.
I'm not sure I totally understand your problem though. You have 200 HTML pages created with front page? You want to templatize them so you can use them in Joomla or do you want to continue using Front page to edit the content?
Either direction is a lot of labour.
Re: Conversion
Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 7:18 pm
by tobiasknoll
Hy,
I do not want to use Joomla, as I think a CMS is oversized for the website I want to do and it is too strict - I want to have more freedom.
Building this particular website was easy using frontpage and only I am editing it. The problem is the design is too old and frontpage doens't give me the freedom I want. When I use a CSS, I cannot use standard headers for all pages anymore, so I can only choose, but I want both.
I want a standard header for all websites AND I want to us a CSS I created out of a template.
Using PHP allows me this, I just add the css to all websites and include the header and script on all pages using php. But I have to edit all pages and change them to php. Then I cannot easily edit them anymore with frontpage.
So In fact from the beginning. I have now 200 webpages in html in frontpage. I want to add a css - which is easy in frontpage, but I also want a standardized header for each page - which is not possible anymore (other than adding it to every page). I thought using php-include is a solution - but I now have problems that I cannot easily edit my site anymore. Maybe this helps to understand my real request better. Is php with include really MY solution or should I try something else?
yours Tobias
Re: Conversion
Posted: Wed Oct 15, 2008 10:20 pm
by allspiritseve
Instead of including a separate header/footer, maybe you could merge them into a wrapper template...
Code: Select all
<html>
<head></head>
<body>
<h1>Header</h1>
<?=$content; ?>
<p>Footer</p>
</body>
</html>
That should be editable in frontpage. Then in each of your other pages, it can include that template as long as its content is saved in the $content variable. Google output buffering for a simple way to capture html into a variable.
Then you should be able to edit your pages in frontpage, though they might look a little funny without the wrapper html. That's the price you have to pay in order to use frontpage to edit your pages.
Re: Conversion
Posted: Thu Oct 16, 2008 2:50 am
by tobiasknoll
Hy,
thanks, I will try this. For Frontpage all pages have to be either html or htm to edit them - is this still possible with this? - I will try to find it out.
Here some more info, if someone else has still ideas:
the site is
http://www.kabardiner.de - here you find my latest trys to rework the design with frontpage only. And in
http://www.kabardiner.de/index.php you can find the really good looking result in php - but only for some sites, as rework is immense.
The site is for an endangered horse-breed and for a non-commercial and non-profit org I am heading in germany. The site is the try to provide all information about the breed and horses we find.
I make it for 8 years now - thats' why it is so much stuff and now it is really hard to rework it.
yours Tobias
Re: Conversion
Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 6:56 am
by malcolmboston
i cant believe no-one has mentioned how bad frontpage is

Re: Conversion
Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 7:52 am
by tobiasknoll
yep really

Re: Conversion
Posted: Fri Oct 17, 2008 8:00 am
by allspiritseve
tobiasknoll wrote: I want to have more freedom.
malcolmboston wrote:i cant believe no-one has mentioned how bad frontpage is

Those two reasons are why I started handcoding my HTML... frontpage sucked, and I didn't have enough money for dreamweaver. You can't beat a text editor for control over your code.