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Ye' old general discussion board. Basically, for everything that isn't covered elsewhere. Come here to shoot the breeze, shoot your mouth off, or whatever suits your fancy.
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The Maverick
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Hello folks...

Post by The Maverick »

I'm new to this site, and I came here to learn as much as I can. First of all, I have absolutely no prior knowledge of php, coding or programming, so please bare with me.

I am more of a graphic designer, and in the past, I've been able to layout frontend only websites that I design in photoshop using Dreamweaver. But you guys all know how tedious it is to have to go back to Dreamweaver for any little change and upload the files back onto my server.

I really want to move on to doing dynamic sites with CMS backend access for me and other users. So far I've designed the template in photoshop and I'm about to slice it up for layout in Dreamweaver. Ok, now, how can I create a "php" site in Dreamweaver and integrate a CMS with it. I don't know if I'm wording the question correctly. But basically, I want to create a php site and add CMS that allows users to login and update the content of the different pages.

Please bare with me, if I sound too elementary that's because I am, but I still need your help.

Thanks in advance.
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pickle
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Post by pickle »

That's a tremendously large question (and not really client-side). Are you asking how to build a CMS or how to put your design on an existing one? Judging from your background, I'd recommend finding a pre-made CMS & add your template to it. A CMS is by no means the first thing someone just learning PHP should try to tackle.
Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
matthijs
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Post by matthijs »

Hi, welcome to the forums.

If you have little to no PHP knowledge, programming a CMS is too difficult. You'd better choose an existing system and build your website in that. Which CMS to choose is a whole different question though. Depends on your needs. Something like Textpattern or Wordpress might be a start. Systems like that work out of the box and have a template system which you can modify to make the website look and function the way you want. Most often, little programming knowledge is needed for that.

by the way, your question probably belongs in General Discussion
The Maverick
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Post by The Maverick »

Sorry for posting in the wrong board. I had a feeling that I was reaching beyong my means here. I'm definitely NOT going to build a CMS from scratch. However, I was wondering if there was an existing CMS software that will allow me to import my custom designed site as opposed to using their existing templates.
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pickle
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Post by pickle »

Wordpress is probably your best bet - simply because it's the most popular so you'll have the most publicly available help if/when you run into trouble.

I'm moving this thread to General Discussion.
Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
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superdezign
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Post by superdezign »

Drupal would be your best bet.
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pickle
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Post by pickle »

From what I've seen of Wordpress & Drupal, I'd vote for Wordpress. I guess it's just a matter of what you're more used to.
Real programmers don't comment their code. If it was hard to write, it should be hard to understand.
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superdezign
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Post by superdezign »

pickle wrote:From what I've seen of Wordpress & Drupal, I'd vote for Wordpress. I guess it's just a matter of what you're more used to.
Drupal isn't very easy for programmers to customize, but users tend to like it. I haven't seen anything produced with Wordpress (that announced the fact) that wasn't a blog.
The Maverick
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Post by The Maverick »

Thanks guys, I think, I'll use Dynamic text in flash for now so I can get the site up and running and change it once I have this all figured out. We'll just have to keep doing it the tedious and old fashion way!

Question though, will Wordpress or Drupal allow me to use a customized web layout or do I have to use one of their templates like Joomla does?
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superdezign
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Post by superdezign »

The Maverick wrote:Thanks guys, I think, I'll use Dynamic text in flash for now so I can get the site up and running and change it once I have this all figured out. We'll just have to keep doing it the tedious and old fashion way!

Question though, will Wordpress or Drupal allow me to use a customized web layout or do I have to use one of their templates like Joomla does?
Templates are templates. If you want to use your own, you have to make one. I know Drupal supports templates, and I think Wordpress did (though the last time I worked with it, I edited the actual Wordpress files, but it wasn't difficult).
wuzlum
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Post by wuzlum »

I also recommend wordpress. It is light and easy to manage.
matthijs
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Post by matthijs »

The wordpress codex http://codex.wordpress.org/Main_Page has everything well documented. But the basics are quite simple. You make a "theme" for the layout of your site. That's just a directory in the directory /themes/, say /themes/mysitetheme/

Then in the theme you have templates for the different sections of the site. You can start very basic with only an index.php, page.php, header.php, footer.php templates, or you can start with an existing theme and modify it. The templates themselves are mostly HTML. Only when you want to get some data from the database/system, you insert a few php tags, like wp_list_categories(), which would produce a list of the categories.
superdezign wrote:Drupal isn't very easy for programmers to customize, but users tend to like it. I haven't seen anything produced with Wordpress (that announced the fact) that wasn't a blog
Haven't used drupal yet, but from what I've seen it's a lot more complicated then wordpress. But haven't used it, so I might be wrong.

Wordpress definitely doesn't have to look like a blog (f.e. my site sitestone.eu). Of course almost every site has a "blog" or news section nowadays, so the blogging feature can be used for that.
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RobertGonzalez
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Post by RobertGonzalez »

Wordpress is very good about using themes. I have over 20 in my Wordpress install.
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