I've never used one of these before but installed WordPress yesterday and had a quick play around with it. It seems really good so far with plenty of options for themes and plugins. I'm not sure if it's right for the project I'm doing next so would like some advice.

 

A friend has asked me to make a website for his new business but he wants to update it himself. Basically it will be the gallery with descriptions and a for sale page (not selling online just listing them) but this can be in the same format. He just wants to add/remove from these two pages and the rest will stay the same.

 

He isn't great with computers though, going online and emails are his limit so it needs to be idiot proof. If I gave him admin access to WP I know it is going to overwhelm him. Is there a way to restrict admin access to certain areas so it only shows what he needs or a plugin that would allow him to do this, maybe directly from the website?

 

I've made gallery's before where photos could just be uploaded via ftp to the relevant folders but there were no descriptions with these so I don't think I can do it this way. A WYSIWYG editor would be better I think anyway.

In the past I have had people specifically request to have their website re-made in WordPress because they have seen a friends website built in it. They way preferred it than their current CMS. WordPress is the easiest CMS to train people to use and I highly recommend it on every project I do.

Restricting access is fairly easy either via code or using a plugin like: https://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-access-manager/.

Good luck with your site

It depends.

 

For brochure style sites which you will find is what the large majority of sites on the web are, then WordPress is a good option. I'd advise against plugins on the whole though, many are poorly written, exposing security weaknesses etc. For example restricting access for certain users: you can do this with a few lines of PHP in your themes functions file.

 

That said the Advanced Custom Fields, Custom Post type plugins are really great.

 

For anything more complex, E commerce etc then you're better off with something like Magento. Yes there is Woocommerce on WP that works, but there's a reason there's no large e-shops using it: because it's pretty limited and doesn't scale well.

Something I've just started trying out is Couch CMS. Seems pretty full featured and is very easy to incorporate into a site, rather than Wordpress where you need to often shoehorn the site into the CMS.

 

Could be very useful where you want to retrofit an existing static site to include a CMS.

 

http://www.couchcms.com/

 

Free to use for personal and commercial but will include a Powered by Couch CMS link at the bottom of the page. A license may be purchased for white label use. Not incredibly expensive at £25/$39

Something I've just started trying out is Couch CMS. Seems pretty full featured and is very easy to incorporate into a site, rather than Wordpress where you need to often shoehorn the site into the CMS.

 

Could be very useful where you want to retrofit an existing static site to include a CMS.

 

http://www.couchcms.com/

 

Free to use for personal and commercial but will include a Powered by Couch CMS link at the bottom of the page. A license may be purchased for white label use. Not incredibly expensive at £25/$39

 

I've never felt like I've had to shoehorn a site into WP. Maybe if you start with a pre-made theme, but not if you build one up from scratch.

That said the Advanced Custom Fields, Custom Post type plugins are really great.

 

Sort of off topic, but I have never actually like the concept of using plugins for custom fields and custom posts. I find metabox class generators a lot better and I write the custom post types myself, I just don't think any of those plugins will actually save me time.

 

That said, I see a lot of developers using them.

 

Sort of off topic, but I have never actually like the concept of using plugins for custom fields and custom posts. I find metabox class generators a lot better and I write the custom post types myself, I just don't think any of those plugins will actually save me time.

 

That said, I see a lot of developers using them.

 

It depends really, Generally we have a blanket ban on plugins because most of them are bad. It just keeps things simple for us and stops a junior dev accidentally installing a bad plugin on one of our projects. We know the ACF plugins are well written and won't cause anything to break. Of course you can write things directly in your functions files (Ours are seperated into multuiple groups rather than a single functions.php). I think that kind of thing just comes down to personal preference, a lot of our AFC is already customized in the functions file so it's kinda half and half for us.

 

Our start template comes with ACF pre-installed so then we can just instruct our devs not to install plugins.

Edited February 8, 201511 yr by rbrtsmith

That's similar to what I do - I have multiple function files, for example all blog related stuff, all custom fields related, all CTP, etc.

I always start with metabox generator (it's built-in my starting theme) and I have only the very basics to start with, then if I need a more complex metabox, for example multiple pictures uploader I can always add it and if not why the bloat?

 

Of course if ACF works for you and saves you time, why not?

I don't think bloat matters (too much) on the backend. Of course loads of bloat is bad, but it's not like it's gonna make any difference to the page performance, unlike bloated frontend frameworks, jQuery plugins etc.

 

The AFC stuff to allows us to more rapidly build out the backends, and focus more time optimising the front-end I think it really depends on what the goals/ budget of the project is and so on.

 

But I think we are in agreement that just throwing plugins in for every feature is a really bad idea

That's similar to what I do - I have multiple function files, for example all blog related stuff, all custom fields related, all CTP, etc.

I always start with metabox generator (it's built-in my starting theme) and I have only the very basics to start with, then if I need a more complex metabox, for example multiple pictures uploader I can always add it and if not why the bloat?

 

Of course if ACF works for you and saves you time, why not?

 

You start with your own blank custom theme or use open source blank , for instance http://roots.io/starter-theme/ ?

Edited February 8, 201511 yr by fleur

Joomla or Wordpress, I like both!

 

Sort of off topic, but I have never actually like the concept of using plugins for custom fields and custom posts. I find metabox class generators a lot better and I write the custom post types myself, I just don't think any of those plugins will actually save me time.

 

That said, I see a lot of developers using them.

 

Seriously if there is one plugin you give a try for a while it's advanced custom fields, it's the first plugin I install when developing a website locally.

Edited February 8, 201511 yr by EpicWebs

I have come across ACF on websites built by other developers, I don't have any troubles working with it at all Just prefer to use metabox generator class - maybe it's just me.

I have come across ACF on websites built by other developers, I don't have any troubles working with it at all Just prefer to use metabox generator class - maybe it's just me.

 

The main field which makes it so powerful, in my opinion, is the repeater field.

 

You start with your own blank custom theme or use open source blank , for instance http://roots.io/starter-theme/ ?

 

We have our own blank theme with our own front-end framework and collection of common back-end modules ready made. When we first started this we just started with totally blank files, everything built from the ground up.

The main field which makes it so powerful, in my opinion, is the repeater field.

 

This, it's a really powerful feature.

I've never used one of these before but installed WordPress yesterday and had a quick play around with it. It seems really good so far with plenty of options for themes and plugins. I'm not sure if it's right for the project I'm doing next so would like some advice.

 

A friend has asked me to make a website for his new business but he wants to update it himself. Basically it will be the gallery with descriptions and a for sale page (not selling online just listing them) but this can be in the same format. He just wants to add/remove from these two pages and the rest will stay the same.

 

He isn't great with computers though, going online and emails are his limit so it needs to be idiot proof. If I gave him admin access to WP I know it is going to overwhelm him. Is there a way to restrict admin access to certain areas so it only shows what he needs or a plugin that would allow him to do this, maybe directly from the website?

 

I've made gallery's before where photos could just be uploaded via ftp to the relevant folders but there were no descriptions with these so I don't think I can do it this way. A WYSIWYG editor would be better I think anyway.

 

Whats the subject matter? Chances are there may be something readily available that would allow your client to edit what they need instead of using a full blown content system.

It still amazes me that Wordpress has no fieldtypes like ACF built in to the core (especially the repeater). It seems like quite an important feature to me, and the success of ACF basically proves there's a big demand for it.

 

We have our own blank theme with our own front-end framework and collection of common back-end modules ready made. When we first started this we just started with totally blank files, everything built from the ground up.

 

Thank you for usefull answer!

I think using Wordpress is like using a truck when a shovel will do if all that is needed is some basic editing. Something like Perch (even though it isn't free), is tons easier to use than Wordpress and much easier to develop for. You also have statamic which also isn't free but also is very easy to use from a user perspective. Im sure there are some free versions of those as well that are in essense flat file generators or simple CMS's.

I hate how people always resort to going to Wordpress for everything. Perhaps your friend is willing to pay a little in order to save himself the hassle of learning Wordpress.

For a very simple site I think static site generators like Jekyll are better than ANY CMS they are more secure, faster becuase there's no database. The only downside they require some knowledge of git to work properly.

Edited February 10, 201511 yr by rbrtsmith

 

You start with your own blank custom theme or use open source blank , for instance http://roots.io/starter-theme/ ?

 

 

 

We have our own blank theme with our own front-end framework and collection of common back-end modules ready made. When we first started this we just started with totally blank files, everything built from the ground up.

 

Yep, same here - my own starter theme and a collection of useful modules

For a very simple site I think static site generators like Jekyll are better than ANY CMS they are more secure, faster becuase there's no database. The only downside they require some knowledge of git to work properly.

 

Jekyll is nice, but not really client friendly. I really like what the team at Statamic are doing at the moment. The last two releases had some amazing features built in, the static site generator lets you deploy static files to where ever you want, from the control panel (http://statamic.com/blog/hello-one-dot-ten) and you have access to revisions without needing any knowledge of Git. They also have a tonne of fieldtypes to build your content around (http://statamic.com/learn/documentation/fieldtypes/).

It still amazes me that Wordpress has no fieldtypes like ACF built in to the core (especially the repeater). It seems like quite an important feature to me, and the success of ACF basically proves there's a big demand for it.

 

That would have been amazing! Hope they'll include it in the core sooner or later.

 

Jekyll is nice, but not really client friendly. I really like what the team at Statamic are doing at the moment. The last two releases had some amazing features built in, the static site generator lets you deploy static files to where ever you want, from the control panel (http://statamic.com/blog/hello-one-dot-ten) and you have access to revisions without needing any knowledge of Git. They also have a tonne of fieldtypes to build your content around (http://statamic.com/learn/documentation/fieldtypes/).

 

You're right Jekyll is not so suited to projects that the client updates, but it's great for developer blogs or say you have a client where you manage the content. Statamic looks much better for clients, but for us devs using git is preferable, it's just so fast to publish content. I can write a blog post and publish it without ever leaving the terminal

 

I'll take a deeper look at statamatic, when I have some free time, it looks like it could be a powerful tool.

Edited February 10, 201511 yr by rbrtsmith

One massive problem I have with WordPress is that when you define custom image sizes you cannot group them. For example if I have 10 different image sizes defined it will generate all these sizes for every image that I upload. This causes problems on image heavy sites. One of our developers is looking to build a module to fix this, but it should have never had this behaviour in the first place.

Edited February 10, 201511 yr by rbrtsmith

One massive problem I have with WordPress is that when you define custom image sizes you cannot group them. For example if I have 10 different image sizes defined it will generate all these sizes for every image that I upload. This causes problems on image heavy sites. One of our developers is looking to build a module to fix this, but it should have never had this behaviour in the first place.

 

Yea It seems a little strange to just create images in case you use them, it should just create them on the fly like it would if you specified a different image size anyway.

Yea It seems a little strange to just create images in case you use them, it should just create them on the fly like it would if you specified a different image size anyway.

 

This whole thing would never have been a problem if clients followed the image size instructions, but more often than not they fail to read them and we end up with a mess of different image sizes. The custom image sizes solves that problem but quickly fills up disk space with unused images. It would be nice if we could assign the image field a custom size property.

 

The one we plan to build will only generate the image size when somebody visits the page and requests it for the first time. Then it will get generated. It means loading could be a little slow for the first visitor to view that page, but that's not a huge downside.

Edited February 10, 201511 yr by rbrtsmith

One massive problem I have with WordPress is that when you define custom image sizes you cannot group them. For example if I have 10 different image sizes defined it will generate all these sizes for every image that I upload. This causes problems on image heavy sites. One of our developers is looking to build a module to fix this, but it should have never had this behaviour in the first place.

 

That's one big problem isn't it! One site I ported over to ExpressionEngine we saved over 5gb worth of image data, having all those unused sizes was costing the client dear for storage.

 

EE uses file upload locations - in that you can create multiple storage locations/folders for different types of file, then in each location you can specify the manipulations you want per folder. Perhaps that's an idea for your module?

 

Alternatively EE has the excellent CEimage addon - this plugin is called via template tags so you can create any sized image on the fly (or add effects such as greyscale), and all manipulations are cached. That means you only have to upload a master image and the templates will do the rest, that saves a lot of disk space - isn't there something similar for WP?

 

That's one big problem isn't it! One site I ported over to ExpressionEngine we saved over 5gb worth of image data, having all those unused sizes was costing the client dear for storage.

 

EE uses file upload locations - in that you can create multiple storage locations/folders for different types of file, then in each location you can specify the manipulations you want per folder. Perhaps that's an idea for your module?

 

Alternatively EE has the excellent CEimage addon - this plugin is called via template tags so you can create any sized image on the fly (or add effects such as greyscale), and all manipulations are cached. That means you only have to upload a master image and the templates will do the rest, that saves a lot of disk space - isn't there something similar for WP?

 

I love the way Craft handles this too, on demand asset transforms, and the ability to setup transforms in the control panel and link them to s specific field.

I love the way Craft handles this too, on demand asset transforms, and the ability to setup transforms in the control panel and link them to s specific field.

 

Oh yes, on demand is really good. A while back a design comp suggested news items in a grid, with 9 different image sizes (repeating after the 9th grid item). Throw in a few

{ % set foo = {bar} %}}

variables into the template and job done!

There are several tutorials uploaded on YouTube why can't you watch them. They are way helpful.

Thanks for all the replies

 

In the past I have had people specifically request to have their website re-made in WordPress because they have seen a friends website built in it. They way preferred it than their current CMS. WordPress is the easiest CMS to train people to use and I highly recommend it on every project I do.

Restricting access is fairly easy either via code or using a plugin like: https://wordpress.org/plugins/advanced-access-manager/.

Good luck with your site

 

I've been having a play with WP now and although it's a little confusing at first I'm learning my way around it. I think my friend might struggle with it though so I'm still not sure whether it's the right platform to use. It looks like I can change their user privileges to an editor rather than admin so hopefully there would be little chance of them making a mistake when adding posts.

 

It depends.

 

For brochure style sites which you will find is what the large majority of sites on the web are, then WordPress is a good option. I'd advise against plugins on the whole though, many are poorly written, exposing security weaknesses etc. For example restricting access for certain users: you can do this with a few lines of PHP in your themes functions file.

 

That said the Advanced Custom Fields, Custom Post type plugins are really great.

 

For anything more complex, E commerce etc then you're better off with something like Magento. Yes there is Woocommerce on WP that works, but there's a reason there's no large e-shops using it: because it's pretty limited and doesn't scale well.

 

Are there any good reliable guides for WP, I've been reading wpbeginner.com or is there something better I can use?

 

Definitely doesn't need an ecommerce site, it's just to show what will be for sale and the services they offer.

 

 

You start with your own blank custom theme or use open source blank , for instance http://roots.io/starter-theme/ ?

 

I like the look of that and some of the examples of websites made with it look really good. I've currently got the dazzling theme installed, which is responsive and I quite like that.

 

What's the best practise for editing the css and html, using the WP editor or download the files and edit on notepad etc?

 

 

Whats the subject matter? Chances are there may be something readily available that would allow your client to edit what they need instead of using a full blown content system.

 

It's doing mobile wheel repairs, one man in a van so it doesn't need to be a really advanced website. A static page saying what he does and a contact page probably with Google maps to show the area he covers. Then a portfolio to show recent jobs that have been done and another page to show what he has for sale, it's these that he wants to update himself. Most of the standard features of WP could be turned off,

 

Creating a post with several images on using WP does sound like an easy way to do this and he can delete/edit them at his leisure. I think the hard part will be him learning how to do it himself.

http://teamtreehouse.com/ have very good courses on how to build a wordpress theme from scratch. They also have courses in PHP which are kind of a prerequisite for learnign WordPress. Well worth the money.

It's doing mobile wheel repairs, one man in a van so it doesn't need to be a really advanced website. A static page saying what he does and a contact page probably with Google maps to show the area he covers. Then a portfolio to show recent jobs that have been done and another page to show what he has for sale, it's these that he wants to update himself. Most of the standard features of WP could be turned off,

 

Creating a post with several images on using WP does sound like an easy way to do this and he can delete/edit them at his leisure. I think the hard part will be him learning how to do it himself.

 

Sounds like Craft would be a good fit. You could hard code content straight into templates that you didn't want him to edit, then set up a bunch of custom fields for content, and a channel/section for the portfolio and sales areas which he could edit. The admin is very uncomplicated and easy to use, plus it's even got a real "Live preview" so you can see changes in real time.

 

You're right Jekyll is not so suited to projects that the client updates, but it's great for developer blogs or say you have a client where you manage the content. Statamic looks much better for clients, but for us devs using git is preferable, it's just so fast to publish content. I can write a blog post and publish it without ever leaving the terminal

 

I'll take a deeper look at statamatic, when I have some free time, it looks like it could be a powerful tool.

 

I use statamic for my site right now and it is perfect from both a developer perspective and a client perspective. You can deploy it with git if you want because it uses YAML for its data instead of a database. The only downside to it that I have found is two fold, it has no comment system in it so you are forced to used Discus or something simular for your blog. The other is that you are forced to buy their form plugin (which is honestly super powerful and kicks EE's form handleing out of the water), but it is an extra $50. So for a typical site, it is $150. But I love the heck out of Statamic. Let me know if you have any questions about it if you dont want to purchase it.

I very rarely do any backend work if I'm being honest, the Jekyll website is for my own blog. IMO the best thing Jekyll has is that github pages can compile it so I can host my site there for free. In my experience discuss has been very good and has not required any maintenance in terms of spam posts etc, but I guess you loose some of the customisations that you might get with another solution.

If I do plan on doing some of my own client based work then I may take you up on the offer, but generally speaking I like to live in the front-end

Edited February 10, 201511 yr by rbrtsmith

When I discussed my recent site with client he said me, that he wants manage site by himself, do everything by himself without any help from developer. We discussed both static pages and CMS. I told client that he will need to refresh CMS and plugins, change tools on hosting and take care of security and change code. In static pages he will need to change the code in html only (he wants to have ability to change pics and text). he choose static page. But now he can't install eclipse or any other html/css editor on his MAC and don't want to deal with code. He wants only push the button and change all he need. I am the same situation as the author of topic. Is there any solution for "lazy client"? I understand about custom fields, maybe it can be solution for him now.

Edited February 10, 201511 yr by fleur

You need to explain to the client that there is no magic button to press that make the changes appear for him. It will have to take some know how and some work to make the changes they need past simple text edits and images that are expected when they don't want to get into code. It gets easier when there are rich text editors but it can quicky mess up the style of any website. They have to expect a happy medium between the two.

You need to explain to the client that there is no magic button to press that make the changes appear for him. It will have to take some know how and some work to make the changes they need past simple text edits and images that are expected when they don't want to get into code. It gets easier when there are rich text editors but it can quicky mess up the style of any website. They have to expect a happy medium between the two.

 

Also it's very likely that if they are using a content management system, updating modules/plugins and core files on the fly will eventually end up in an error. Which in their mind will be the fault of the developer.