Hi,

I'm wondering where to start learning about CMS's. Though for clarification - am I right in thinking a CMS is what you use to enable someone else to update a website without having to edit the actual html files and upload them, etc?

If so, if anyone could point me in the right direction, I'd be really grateful.

Do you know much about backend languages? like PHP? I suggest you start by learning that, learn PHP, MySQL and once you have a reasonable grasp of these then start looking into CMS systems. In all areas of development it pays to learn a language before you start trying to use things that are built upon it.

 

http://www.teamtreehouse.com is a good place to learn PHP and mySQL

 

With PHP and mySQL you can allow for publishing of content, so you don't *need* a CMS, you can make your own, but unless you had a very specific project with the budget it's best to use a CMS, especially for those who are inexperienced. But as a learning tool building your own basic CMS is a good idea.

Edited May 16, 201511 yr by rbrtsmith

I'm not sure he is talking about building a CMS, but rather generic information about them and perhaps set up an already established one.

 

Can you clarify TC.

rbrtsmith -

Do you know much about backend languages? like PHP? I suggest you start by learning that, learn PHP, MySQL and once you have a reasonable grasp of these then start looking into CMS systems. In all areas of development it pays to learn a language before you start trying to use things that are built upon it.

Only a little. I do see what you mean. I plan on learning PHP and MySQL at some point, but want to perfect my front-end skills first.

cibgraphics -

I'm not sure he is talking about building a CMS, but rather generic information about them and perhaps set up an already established one.

Can you clarify TC.

Yeah, I was kind of thinking of that, unless it would actually be simpler/quicker to set up my own system. But as I said, my knowledge of PHP is currently very limited.

Would it be better to leave CMS's alone for the moment, then?

Edited May 19, 201511 yr by rhubarblover

Firstly I would have a play with some of the more popular CMS frameworks like Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal, and any others that I may have missed off. Set them up locally and just have ago at adding pages and content, changing the theme. If you find one that you like then concentrate on that particular CMS and read / watch tutorials or even ask more questions on here.

 

Googling Content Management Systems and flicking through the google pages you may find some smaller more light weight CMS frameworks to play with.

If you want to focus more on the front-end then just do that, what are your long-term ambitions? If you wanna become a front-end developer then you will only need a small amount of knowledge in backend work.

There's a hell of a lot to learn in the front-end so don't spend too much time with back-end tech. WP is a good option for a beginner I say learn a bit of PHP beforehand because this is what WP is built upon and reputable agencies will be building templates from scratch, not hacking away at pre-built themes. Learn how to template with php by including files rather than duplicating HTML.

Don't even bother wasting your time looking at Joomla it's not good. Drupal is very good but again spend more time focusing on getting solid in the front-end if this is your intention-

 

https://teamtreehouse.com/ has a good introduction for WP

Thanks for the advice. I'll have a look into Drupal.

I have made two Wordpress themes (from scratch) so far, but the thing is, it seems very much set up for blogging - I've heard you can customise the admin panel so it only has the essentials for a client to edit their (non-blog) website but that does sound like it would require a lot of knowledge of PHP. If I'm completely honest, I really didn't enjoy working with it (in one theme I had to add an extra div tag to stop the theme from breaking!(definitely extra, I checked a LOT)), are the others similar to Wordpress? By that I mean in the way that you can't just write the code normally, things have to be put in special functions to work and pre-made classes, etc, you need to be aware of and override?

 

If you want to focus more on the front-end then just do that, what are your long-term ambitions? If you wanna become a front-end developer then you will only need a small amount of knowledge in backend work.

I'm going to try out freelance work (on a free basis at first, for my portfolio) as a web designer first. Really, my only long term ambition is just something in web design/development (though with little graphic design work, so probably more development) that preferably lets me work from home. I want to develop skills that make me employable if freelance doesn't work out - I learned HTML and CSS first, so Javascript seemed the best option to take next as it would give me the ability to apply for front-end web development jobs.

If the freelance does work out, then it seems like a good idea to learn back-end languages as well so I can do that myself.

joomla also best to crate a web site for new bee,its many futures and easy to use all new commers

There are many CMS's that don't require you do use (or know) PHP at all, have a look at the likes of Craft, Statamic and ExpressionEngine, all of these have very powerful template engines that are a far lot easier to use than raw PHP.

joomla also best to crate a web site for new bee,its many futures and easy to use all new commers

Thanks, but I'm not a newbie - I want a CMS to enable clients to change text/images etc on their website which I have created for them.

 

Bluedreamer -

Thanks! I'll have a look into those.

Thanks, but I'm not a newbie - I want a CMS to enable clients to change text/images etc on their website which I have created for them.

 

Bluedreamer -

Thanks! I'll have a look into those.

 

Joomla is also terrible and well out of date now. So yes avoid

Just thought I'd update - I've tried Drupal and seem to have gotten the hang of it Seems relatively easy to make a website into a theme for it. I will try out the others that have been suggested too though.

which CMS you have start before that get clear knowledge about the document,until you have start easily

WordPress is the #1 most popular CMS platforms in the world, and the easiest way to manage your website content. WordPress is basically a website builder that has prefixed all the advanced coding of programming a website and captured it all into a clean and well-organized user interface. This makes WordPress ideal for even the least experienced. More details Read the blog on Second online Income to Successful website create.

WordPress is the #1 most popular CMS platforms in the world, and the easiest way to manage your website content. WordPress is basically a website builder that has prefixed all the advanced coding of programming a website and captured it all into a clean and well-organized user interface. This makes WordPress ideal for even the least experienced. More details Read the blog on Second online Income to Successful website create.

 

I'm not looking for a 'website builder', I just want a system for clients to edit some parts of a website I've built (and as I mentioned in my last post, I'm learning to use Drupal), please actually read the posts in this thread.

 

And I'm not going to your blog for more details, but thanks anyway.

 

I'm not looking for a 'website builder', I just want a system for clients to edit some parts of a website I've built (and as I mentioned in my last post, I'm learning to use Drupal), please actually read the posts in this thread.

 

And I'm not going to your blog for more details, but thanks anyway.

 

WordPress ain't a website builder, secondonlineincome is mistaken.

After going through Craft with Jack I'd highly recommend that, but if not then WordPress is pretty beginner friendly. Drupal though it's great is not for beginners.

 

Why don't you consider outsourcing the backend? Trying to do design, frontend and backend as a beginner is incredibly tough, I've always gone by the principle of sticking to your strengths - be that frontend, design or backend and outsource the rest - reason being there's way to much to learn to master all 3 unless you have unlimited time.

 

The best thing I did for my career (luckilly it was early on) was to focus on frontend and even when I'm putting 90% of my time into frontend I still find it very hard to keep up and learn all that I want to. I think it's important to learn some basics in all to have an appreciation for the other areas though but to attempt to learn all will take a long long time, and when you're done a lot of it will be out of date. I'm sure you can find a backender and designer to team up with

 

Of course if you wish to do all 3 then I wish you every success, folk have done it before, but I can hazard a guess it took years, and in those days things like Front-end were far less complex than today.

 

Hope this helps.

I like to learn things by doing. There are plenty of websites available that provide free resources and tutorials.

rbrtsmith -
Oh, I know Wordpress isn't just a website builder - I just found the implication I needed one irritating

After going through Craft with Jack I'd highly recommend that, but if not then WordPress is pretty beginner friendly. Drupal though it's great is not for beginners.

Craft does look good - I'll need to try it out, but it's probably best to learn to use one at a time.
The thing about Wordpress is it's really designed for blogging... maybe someone more advanced, like yourself, can get it to work well for anything, but I've had a lot of trouble doing that. It also includes quite a lot of stuff that you'll never need if not running a blog.

I've warmed to it - especially since I've learned some PHP while using it - but it doesn't seem worth it if I have to spend weeks solving small problems that wouldn't happen with another CMS.

Why don't you consider outsourcing the backend? Trying to do design, frontend and backend as a beginner is incredibly tough, I've always gone by the principle of sticking to your strengths - be that frontend, design or backend and outsource the rest - reason being there's way to much to learn to master all 3 unless you have unlimited time.

Good point - if I was to outsource, it would probably be design, though. Long term I'd like to focus much more on development. Not sure whether front or back-end - it would be awesome to learn all the languages So I don't want to limit myself with that yet, until I'm sure.

The trouble with outsourcing, though, is, I don't really know anyone. Not just people in web design... anyone. There's my household and my husband's best friend, a couple of friends in different countries, but that's it. Obviously that needs to be improved upon - but currently I really have no hope of finding someone to team up with.

There's plenty of designers on here, I'm sure you could callaborate with! I'd love to learn all the languages too, but we have to be realistic and try to make wise choices. I love to learn, but it's really important to choose the right things to learn - those that will help push your career forward. Being a jack of all trades but a master of none won't get you too far.

At your stage I think it's good to be learning both to at least get an appreciation then down the line you can make a choice of which path to take,

 

Consider spend time learning JavaScript in depth - that can run both front and back-end so in a way you can kill two birds with one stone. There's also the added benefit that some big big systems are moving over to JS based systems (Netflix, PayPal, Linkedin etc) which means JS devs are in very high demand.

 

Btw I'm far from an expert in WordPress, I know the basics but I work primarilly in the frontend, also - to make WordPress into more of a CMS you can use something like Advanced Custom Fields.

Edited August 13, 201510 yr by rbrtsmith

I would agree with the fact that Advanced Custom Fields is pretty much essential to turn Wordpress into a proper CMS. You can then start creating template pages with more than one block of content - a main text article and a sidebar for example. The bit of code needed to pull in a custom field is quite straight-forward (by Wordpress standards).

 

The Pro version is about £12, and includes the repeatable content field. For me, this is an essential field type as it allows you to create anything from slideshows to a table of contact details. You can create a custom field group and then link it to a template or templates. This means that when an administrator chooses a template when creating a new page, the basic text field changes to the custom one linked to the template.

 

I think the main confusion with Wordpress is the theme and plugin culture that has grown up around the system - aimed at letting non-coders create a website. (I once tried to build a blog with a theme based on Genesis. I lost count of the number of plugins I needed to use to get basic functionality.) So when some people are discussing Wordpress, they are actually referring to this type of development process rather than what I would call a proper CMS.

I've worked with custom taxonomies/fields/etc without using the Advanced Custom Fields plugin - it did take a while, but I thought it seemed important to learn how it works so I don't have to rely on the plugin. I intend to try it out though, no doubt it can do more complex stuff than I can

Here's an example of an issue I had with Wordpress: I created a gardening website for my father in law - it was to have pages on various subjects (many of which - but not all - would include posts from certain categories), a blog and a product page.

So, when creating, say, the 'reviews' page I had the choice of using a category template or a page-reviews template. BUT, I also needed pages for 'gardening tips', that kind of thing - all individual, top level pages which would hold posts from the particular categories - so it would make sense for those pages to all come from the same template.

Firstly, using a category page for them all was out, because the URL (if I'm remembering correctly) would include 'category', which I didn't want. Just wanted websitename/reviews. That probably sounds really fussy, but it just didn't look very good.

Which leaves me using a page template, but there is no way I'm aware of to create a specific page TYPE template that could be used for all of these pages, and not influence normal pages that my father in law may want to add at some point.

So, there has to be a page-reviews template, page-gardening-tips, etc. All of which I need to create for him, so if he decides he wants a new page featuring certain posts, he has to come to me again. Which, to me, defeats the point of a CMS, even if it would only take a couple of minutes to deal with.

Sorry if that doesn't make sense, I've never been very good at explaining these types of problems, and it's been several months since I last touched the website...

 

I love to learn, but it's really important to choose the right things to learn - those that will help push your career forward. Being a jack of all trades but a master of none won't get you too far.

Yeah, that's true It's just a shame.

 

 

Consider spend time learning JavaScript in depth - that can run both front and back-end so in a way you can kill two birds with one stone. There's also the added benefit that some big big systems are moving over to JS based systems (Netflix, PayPal, Linkedin etc) which means JS devs are in very high demand.

That's something I've been considering - it does sound like a good idea.

Edited August 14, 201510 yr by rhubarblover