batgranny

Currently building a light site using GetSimple and I can't recommend it highly enough. It's got all of the essential features of larger CMS' like Wordpress without all the faffing around. Give it a shot, it's great. If your interested here's the WIP/

I dunno, I just don't seem to be getting it right, my gradients always look flat and not curved regardless of the colors I chosse. Perhaps adding another color stop might help. Thanks for the advice so far.

One thing I think that my designs are sorly lacking in are half decent gradients, somehow they always seem quite flat no matter what I do and as a result don't seem very current. Has anyone any tips or know of any tutorials on how to produce really nice gradients? I've had a google around but most of the results are basic 'this is how you use the gradient tool' type things and I'm getting a little frustrated that this gap in my knowledge isn't plugged.

I've come across GetSimple CMS before, that might be the one to go for. Has anyone any exprience of using it at all?

I wouldn't do *any* job for under £400. If the guy has examples of Mr Gumtree's work and he's happy enough then there's not a lot you can do, but it sounds like he's trying to haggle with you or else he would have just gone with Gumtree Guy. Stick to your guns, provide examples of your work, provide him with a short brief, a timeframe etc etc. The more professional and reassuring you can be that you will provide top quality work and a professional service the more likely he will be to hire you. Of course if cost is his main concern you're out of the running. Don't devalue yourself by accepting work for peanuts or you'll always be working for peanuts because he'll say to his friends "Hire this bloke, he's really cheap!".

Hi folks, I want to create a template and use a CMS backend for simple sites to speed up development time. I currently use 960gs or Blueprint for frontend development and Joomla or Wordpress for backend but I'm looking for a CMS that's simpler to implement and lighter. I don't really need anything fancy CMS wise, the sites I'll be using this for are standard homepage | About | Services | contact form type. Something with similar functionality to CouchCMS (in fact Couch would be perfect except it uses IonCube which can be a pain), build in PHP/HTML/CSS, define editable regions and a built in contact form. Is there anything out there that would fit the bill? preferably free but I'm not adverse to paying for the right system.

IonCube loader is a php encoder which is used in many paid for php modules sites and plugins. The plugin php wp-member is encrypted and needs the plugin to decrypt it back into normal PHP. Your Hosting provider should be able to help you with this. You should still be able to log into the admin section of Wordpress and disable the plugin though. Oh, I found this on the plugin support page: http://smartmediapro.com/client-area/knowledgebase/19/Site-error-the-file-filenameorlocation-requires-the-ionCube-PHP-Loader-to-be-installed-by-the-site-administrator.html

Most CMS' have an option where you can hide pages based on a logged in user's access levels. I've done this a few times in Joomla, dead easy.

Someone should pin this to the top of the forum

Fine on IE8 & FF4 @ 1280x1024

Could you provide a code example or live site?

I'm in the middle of making a site for a Pony Trekking startup, they don't even have a name yet: dev dot chrismcallister dot net It's an old style layout but that's what the client wants.

This seems like the main problem, and if you fix this you can just use the advice above. Why can't you fix the position of your menu items? An example of the code and the site would probably help

If the quality of their own website is anything to go by I wouldn't touch it with a barge pole.

Try and break out of the box a bit to make your design look a bit different. Float the odd graphic, use ribbons. A lot of the time I find that just trying to get rid of the boxiness form a site can make it look very different.