April 13, 200818 yr Hey guys and galls, I have noticed that most clients want similar things from web pages when server side coding is needed so I am just wanting to know who uses wordpress, joomla or any other systems (even hand coding). I am wanting to get seriously into creating sites using server side code and have decided during the summer holidays I will sit down with my laptop and try and learn PHP and any other systems and languages that you guys think I should start learning. Thanks, Nathan P.
April 13, 200818 yr Neither. Both are just a cop out from not taking the time to script your own system. It's like warming up a ready meal for your first date rather than cooking from scratch. Take the time to learn php/mysql - and really add value to your skill and ability for the future. Although content management systems are useful and have their place - they are more for those who want to have a go at building their own website and don't have any coding experience.
April 13, 200818 yr Author cool, thats that cleared up for me then. Any body any tips in terms of books, tutorials etc.on how to get into PHP and mysql, I know the basics but thats it.
April 13, 200818 yr Neither. Both are just a cop out from not taking the time to script your own system. It's like warming up a ready meal for your first date rather than cooking from scratch. Take the time to learn php/mysql - and really add value to your skill and ability for the future. Although content management systems are useful and have their place - they are more for those who want to have a go at building their own website and don't have any coding experience. This is absolutely not true — a CMS is a tool, not a cheat. I remember you saying in another post that you use Dreamweaver, and if you use your same argument you are saying that people that use Dreamweaver are "copping out" because they can't be bothered to code everything by hand. Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal and Expression Engine (to name a few) are all extremely powerful content management systems, which can be used in their most basic way — with pre-built templates, or they can be customised and extended with custom theme and plugins. They are basically as complex and powerful as you need them to be. They are also extremely secure, and have gone through months and years of development and testing with a huge number of people. This means that they will be pretty much guaranteed to work as they are described — plus they are free! There is also the issue of time — not everyone has as much free time as you do to go and make their own CMS from scratch, test it, secure it, and update it. The amount of money you would lose in work just doesn't justify taking all the time out to make your own. I could give you a list of well known web designers who use Wordpress and Expression Engine for their websites. Why reinvent the wheel? Rob
April 13, 200818 yr Author So taking into account what rob has just said it dosn't really matter what one I was to learn? learning how to code with these CMS applications, is it just trail and error or is there a website that gives good tutorails to get me started? Nathan
April 13, 200818 yr Nathan, have a look through their features, communities and plugins, and pick the one which does what you need. Personally I would recommend Wordpress or Expression Engine, but it's totally down to your requirement and personal preference. You don't need to learn how to code any differently with these CMSs, they should all have templating functionality, which is basically a normal web page, but with a few special hooks or tags that the CMS uses to input the content. Wordpress in particular has a great codex which goes through how to customise it and create themes, amongst a lot of other advanced topics.
April 13, 200818 yr I agree with exactly what rob said, "why reinvent the wheel". Yes if there isn't a add on out there to do what you need then make your own. But wordpress and other CMS systems are used widely by web designers, check rob's new site for an example!
April 13, 200818 yr This is absolutely not true — a CMS is a tool, not a cheat. I remember you saying in another post that you use Dreamweaver, and if you use your same argument you are saying that people that use Dreamweaver are "copping out" because they can't be bothered to code everything by hand. How do you know i don't?? They are also extremely secure, and have gone through months and years of development and testing with a huge number of people. This means that they will be pretty much guaranteed to work as they are described — plus they are free! Free and easy is all very well, but it doesn't allow you the confidence of developing a bespoke system from scratch for a client who's needs don't fit inside the box.. There is also the issue of time — not everyone has as much free time as you do to go and make their own CMS from scratch, test it, secure it, and update it. The amount of money you would lose in work just doesn't justify taking all the time out to make your own. How would you know how much free time I have? Im not the one who has posted 1200 posts since Febuary... I could give you a list of well known web designers who use Wordpress and Expression Engine for their websites. So could I, doesnt mean they have any skill without it necessarily.... Why reinvent the wheel? AKA 'why bother?' Rob
April 13, 200818 yr How do you know i don't??Free and easy is all very well, but it doesn't allow you the confidence of developing a bespoke system from scratch for a client who's needs don't fit inside the box.. How would you know how much free time I have? Im not the one who has posted 1200 posts since Febuary... So could I, doesnt mean they have any skill without it necessarily.... AKA 'why bother?' Rob Has your signutare says of it made sense we would all be doing it. So why doesn't everyone make their own CMS because they don't need to, I know lots of web designers who use and alot of web design companies who recommend it, not only because it saves time it will also save your client money.
April 13, 200818 yr How do you know i don't?? You said you use Dreamweaver in another post. It doesn't matter if you do or don't, it's the principle of your argument. You are basically saying that using a tool to make things easier is "copping out", in other words, you should be making everything yourself, the hard way. Which I think is stupid, as a tool is there to be used — so long as you know how to use it, and understand what it is doing. Free and easy is all very well, but it doesn't allow you the confidence of developing a bespoke system from scratch for a client who's needs don't fit inside the box.. I'm yet to meet a client who's needs can't be matched with one of the CMS systems already out there — you could always build a plugin if you really need that functionality. I'm 100% confident in Wordpress, they spend the majority of their time on this project, which means that it will be a darn site better than a bespoke CMS that I can't work on all the time. How would you know how much free time I have? Im not the one who has posted 1200 posts since Febuary... 1200 posts is about 26 a day, which is hardly a lot of time actually — my post count and free-time is irrelevant to this anyway. I said you must have a lot of free time because you are willing to create a custom CMS from scratch — many, many days and weeks of development. Hours which would be outside of work as I'm sure a client wouldn't be happy waiting for, or paying you to develop it if you were going to sell/use the same CMS to other clients (which would cost them cheaper), and time when you aren't working is free time. So could I, doesnt mean they have any skill without it necessarily.... And how do you know this? Some of the biggest names out there use applications like Wordpress — people that are pointing the way for the next stage of web development (CSS3, HTML5, PHP6, etc). AKA 'why bother?' Hardly. Unless you are going to come up with something so groundbreaking and different to what is already out there, it doesn't make any sense, economically or logically, to spend days, if not weeks, developing your CMS. I'm sure you could find something better to do with that time. I feel that we are going to start going round in circles soon, so maybe we should drop the argument and continue with the discussion that this thread should be about — Joomla or Wordpress.
April 13, 200818 yr Both are just a cop out from not taking the time to script your own system. I'm sorry, but that's complete cowpoo. Content management systems are there to literally make "managing your content" that bit more straightforward, to give you more time to focus on other things. They're not a cop out at all. CMS have a specific purpose and they're good at what they do. How is relying on a CMS with thousands of other users copping out? Take WP as an example. If you were to write your own version, it would take months. Look at all the plugins. Look at all the ready-to-use themes. Look at the community of hundreds upon thousands of users. I'd pick their collective knowledge over my personal knowledge any day, and to do otherwise is egotistical, unless it's actually warranted. If I wanted to, I probably *could* build my own CMS. But, I don't want to because I don't trust myself. I don't know enough about PHP security to 99.9% guarantee that my blog would be safe from hacking etc. etc. For that reason, I'll stick with WP for now. It's like warming up a ready meal for your first date rather than cooking from scratch. No it's not. It's actually like knowing the most efficient way to manage your content. Although content management systems are useful and have their place - they are more for those who want to have a go at building their own website and don't have any coding experience. No they're not. Firstly you say that using a readybuilt CMS instead of your own is copping out, and then you say that using a CMS is for n00bs. Please, show me good and useful sites that don't use a CMS of some sort. This very forum is using a CMS right now. Is that cheating too? Content management systems such as Wordpress are useful in that they can be as simple or as complicated as you want to make them. If you have no coding experience, then you can use a pre-made theme. However, to imply that WP users have no coding experience is, to put it frankly, downright insulting.
April 13, 200818 yr Hey guys and galls, I have noticed that most clients want similar things from web pages when server side coding is needed so I am just wanting to know who uses wordpress, joomla or any other systems (even hand coding). I am wanting to get seriously into creating sites using server side code and have decided during the summer holidays I will sit down with my laptop and try and learn PHP and any other systems and languages that you guys think I should start learning. Thanks, Nathan P. To get back to the original posters question. Nathan, WordPress and Joomla are BOTH great systems and as a designer you should probably learn both. Once, you've learned those two, learn another one. I know it's easy for me to say that, but I think you get my point. For what it's worth, in my opinion WordPress is probably slightly easier to get to grips with than Joomla so maybe that makes a better starting point? Once you've got to grips with templating one CMS it will be easy to move on to the next.
April 13, 200818 yr Learn Wordpress, learn Joomla, and at the same time, learn how to extend them so they do what you want them to! I learned PHP and MySQL by fiddling around with PHP Nuke, because it never quite fit the bill. I've fixed bugs, changed the way it works, and created modules of my own just by looking at the code that was already there. The whole idea of open source software, and object oriented code is that code should be reusable. Write it once, use it a hundred times. The collaborative, open, connected world we live in today is centered around these ideas. Use the intelligence of the collected masses, 1 million heads are better than one. There may be times when all you need is a very basic CMS and writing it for yourself may well be the answer. But for anything complex, use the tools available that have been worked upon and perfected by thousands of people. I was recently asked to implement an online diary/calendar system for a client. They were not willing to pay for me to implement one from scratch and they also didn't have that kind of time, but at the same time I couldn't find a single available solution that ticked all of their boxes. I did however find that WebCalendar ticked most of them. Using my understanding of CMS's in general and my knowledge of PHP code both gained from messing around with several CMS's I extended it to work the way the client wanted, in a very short time frame and on a restricted budget. This is where I think you want to be?
April 14, 200818 yr Author I have been playing with wordpress all morning and am getting a bit confused with things. Is there any good walk through in making themes, I am wanting to make my portfolio through wordpress, So i need a little bit of help lol.
April 14, 200818 yr If you check out the Wordpress Codex you'll find a nice area all about Wordpress Design and Layout — that should help you out.
April 15, 200818 yr I would've used Textpattern. The template system makes a lot more sense than the others. I would've said ExpressionEngine, but only the basic version is free. Both of those CMS's have simpler customised tags for templates. I'm not sure how using a CMS will help you learn PHP though. The whole point of a CMS is that you don't need to know PHP.
April 15, 200818 yr Hi! I use Wordpress and he likes me. This CMS is well suited for web design blog.
June 30, 200818 yr Why should we buy a car when we can just make our own? I don't think there is a good reason to make your own CMS unless it's really necessary which by and large it isn't. Learning PHP/MYSQL isn't something that your going to pick up totally by using Joomla or wordpress but your not going to be able to build your own CMS either if you are learning. Joomla is a great place to start for learning PHP and mySQL. It gives you a great intro into how the two languages can work together to provide dynamic content as well as Object Oriented Programming (OOP) practices and examples. On another note, Joomla has an enormous user base, thousands of people asking a lot of the same questions you are and giving examples/help. Why not take advantage of this resource? You could really improve your knowledge by making an extension (component) for Joomla. Since it is open source other people could try your component out, tell you what they think and you go from there. Don't reinvent the wheel because you simply don't have to.
June 30, 200818 yr Wordpress is by far more flexible than Joomla. I love using wordpress - nearly every site I've done is based on WP. ...I can't stand Joomla, but that is a personal thing;)
June 30, 200818 yr They shouldn't be compared. They are made for different audiences. Learn to use both as well as Drupal.
June 30, 200818 yr From a user point of view, I find Joomla really hard to use. The back end is a pain in the rear end! WP on the other hand is so nice and easy for both designer and user. I wish I'd known about it before I got involved with Joomla.
June 30, 200818 yr Yeah, notbanksy is right i cant stand joomla, although you can creat a nice site with it if you've got time and patience, i think if i tried i'd proberly throw my pc out of the widow after just a few days. And wordpress, its so nice, clean, tidy, welcoming...i love it! everthing, well most things are exactly where you would think to find them. Don't get me wrong though, joomla is a very good and well coded cms, just i think wordpress is better!
June 30, 200818 yr http://secunia.com/search/?search=joomla "SQL injection" and "file inclusion" are about as serious as you can get. Might want to check these out: http://www.ahyap.com/blog/joomla-sucks.php http://peteashton.com/2007/05/joomla_sucks_donkey_cock/ http://thedefaced.org/forums/showthread.php?t=2267 http://www.designerstalk.com/forums/web-st...033-joomla.html http://www.netshinesoftware.com/security/j...a-security.html http://www.torkiljohnsen.com/2006/07/19/ma...ummer-holidays/ <- kinda old but still indication of their track record. http://lixtetrax.wordpress.com/2007/10/23/...-drupal-fanboi/ http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=432&t=297886
June 30, 200818 yr I have had a Joomla site running for over 2 years getting between 2,000 and 16,000 hits a day and performance wise it is OK, and the site of the site wouldn't of been all that possible in Wordpress, especially in v1.5 which was out at the time I believe. But SQL injections are a problem and should be fixed and I am sure they were fixed in Joomla 1.5. Am I the only person who uses joomla? Nope. I have it for a personal site, although given the choice I know now, I would go with Drupal instead.
June 30, 200818 yr It is a common misconception that Joomla is insecure. Joomla is not insecure, it is very secure. The extensions/components for Joomla are where you get into problems. Make sure your extensions are secure and you will be fine. I agree that Joomla 1.0 was a pain in the ass to use on the back-end. It has gotten much better in both usability and speed (IMO) in 1.5. I don't think Joomla sucks as has been posted, it just won't hold your hand.
June 30, 200818 yr It is a common misconception that Joomla is insecure. Joomla is not insecure, it is very secure. The extensions/components for Joomla are where you get into problems. Make sure your extensions are secure and you will be fine. I agree that Joomla 1.0 was a pain in the ass to use on the back-end. It has gotten much better in both usability and speed (IMO) in 1.5. I don't think Joomla sucks as has been posted, it just won't hold your hand. Did you read my list of sources for it being insecure? SQL Injection is enough said IMO. http://secunia.com/advisories/30752/ ^^That is FAR from a misconception!
June 30, 200818 yr I don't think you finished reading my post, this is a vulnerability in a component. Something that is added on to Joomla and not inherently a part of it. As I stated you don't need to worry about -->Joomla<-- being vulnerable but the components that you add on to it which may compromise your setup. Feel free to find a security hole in Joomla itself, I would love to know about one.
June 30, 200818 yr Ok, but it is the Joomla system which is being exploited through a component. Which means there is a flaw in the Joomla design to even allow this to happen. "Hackers" are using add ons to exploit it. There are plenty of add ons for other CMS services that do not come near the risks of Joomla's add ons. If Joomla's security was top notch it wouldn't allow something like an SQL injection to happen through a component..
June 30, 200818 yr And perhaps currently there are no "known" exploits in the default install of Joomla, they arise periodically more often then I see from any other CMS.
June 30, 200818 yr As far as security goes the weakest link is always the one that breaks (duh). By adding these extensions to Joomla you are trusting that the extension will not break your system. The way a lot of these extensions work is by using other tables (core tables of Joomla) for various things like users/content/etc. Components will read and write from these tables from the Joomla core and use them with their added functionality. If an extension is able to be compromised then yes it will allow for Joomla to be insecure. But that is also like saying that if you install a faulty piece of software for XP (old hotness),Vista(new and busted), or the godly OS X that opens a hole in the operating system's security (there are dozens) that the OS is insecure. I don't think we will see eye to eye on this issue but I think that it is worth noting that when you add code with the ability to access your database(s) you need to be sure that it is handling your data safely no matter the application.
June 30, 200818 yr Let me kind of rephrase what I am saying. Yes Joomla by itself is pretty darn secure. But what is Joomla without it's add ons or extensions? It is nothing.. It is all the side development that makes Joomla the fun "CMS" that it is. Please goto http://milw0rm.org/search.php Search for Joomla. Then go back and search for Drupal. Then search for Wordpress.. Drupal barely has anything. Wordpress has quite a few.. but then Joomla... wow about 3 times the amount of different exploits. I like what Joomla is trying to be.. I really do. But as far as over all security goes for it with its many fun add ons... security might as well be nonexistent .
July 3, 200818 yr This is absolutely not true — a CMS is a tool, not a cheat. I remember you saying in another post that you use Dreamweaver, and if you use your same argument you are saying that people that use Dreamweaver are "copping out" because they can't be bothered to code everything by hand. Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal and Expression Engine (to name a few) are all extremely powerful content management systems, which can be used in their most basic way — with pre-built templates, or they can be customised and extended with custom theme and plugins. They are basically as complex and powerful as you need them to be. They are also extremely secure, and have gone through months and years of development and testing with a huge number of people. This means that they will be pretty much guaranteed to work as they are described — plus they are free! There is also the issue of time — not everyone has as much free time as you do to go and make their own CMS from scratch, test it, secure it, and update it. The amount of money you would lose in work just doesn't justify taking all the time out to make your own. I could give you a list of well known web designers who use Wordpress and Expression Engine for their websites. Why reinvent the wheel? Rob Just to add to this, I'd like to say, first there was fire then electric light bulbs, I'm beginning to get tired of people throwing bad comments like "cheat" or "easy scape" at programs like dreamweaver and such. These peograms are not SO easily used that the average joe can just run up and start utilizing it. It does still require some type of fundamental skill. Sure there may be some tecnical difficulties applied with these new programs that lend you a "helping" hand, but that's only going to get better, and at that you can always go back and hand program what you don't and do want to. People aren't going to run around using note pad forever, not that there's anything wrong with that, but don't redicule others for using programs like such. Rather you can design a website with notepad or dreamweaver the website is still going to run the same market price, it's also capable that they both come out the same. So just stop it, stop it now! Do it now! lol..
July 6, 200818 yr Just to add to this, I'd like to say, first there was fire then electric light bulbs, I'm beginning to get tired of people throwing bad comments like "cheat" or "easy scape" at programs like dreamweaver and such. These peograms are not SO easily used that the average joe can just run up and start utilizing it. It does still require some type of fundamental skill. Sure there may be some tecnical difficulties applied with these new programs that lend you a "helping" hand, but that's only going to get better, and at that you can always go back and hand program what you don't and do want to. People aren't going to run around using note pad forever, not that there's anything wrong with that, but don't redicule others for using programs like such. Rather you can design a website with notepad or dreamweaver the website is still going to run the same market price, it's also capable that they both come out the same. So just stop it, stop it now! Do it now! lol.. bad example.. using a program to automate all of your work like dream weaver is a cheat.. There is no purpose to dreamweaver/frontpage unless you don't know how to code.. and if you know how to code yet use dreamweaver/frontpage you are cheating/failing at the design because its never 100% correct.
July 6, 200818 yr bad example.. using a program to automate all of your work like dream weaver is a cheat..There is no purpose to dreamweaver/frontpage unless you don't know how to code.. and if you know how to code yet use dreamweaver/frontpage you are cheating/failing at the design because its never 100% correct. I use Dreamweaver. Am I a cheat? No. I only use code view and type all my code myself. I like the syntax highlighting and the built in FTP program which automatically uploads files once I save them. You can't just generically say anyone using Dreamweaver is a cheat, I don't use the WYSIWYG editor so I don't appreciate your labelling.
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