WordPressure
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- SteveJobs0
good links. that should be enough for me to give 'em a proof of concept to use as a template if they choose wp. thanks!
- acescence0
yes, I usually write the themes myself from scratch. I would start by reading through the wordpress codex on how themes work, how WP loads theme files based on the request. then familiarize yourself with the template tags. really much of what you need is in the docs. I usually create static html/css files and get that working and then paste the php and template tags in
there are a lot of how-tos from scratch, but most are outdated with the release of WP3, though much of it is the same with some new additions.
http://net.tutsplus.com/tutorial…
http://www.wpdesigner.com/2007/0…
there's also a #WordPress IRC channel that a lot of helpful people hang out on.
- SteveJobs0
so you're inserting these customizations directly into the theme files themselves (header.php, index.php, etc.)?
sounds like i just need some good wp hacking tutorials. got any links?
- acescence0
oh, you could do that too I suppose, but I would still provide a menu in case. there are geolocation services you could use to do it programmatically:
- SteveJobs0
ahh, ok that's what i was wondering. so your end user has to manually select their language to localize the content. no fancy ip detection or anything can be coded in easily?
- acescence0
btw- I use this magic fields plugin to create custom admin panels to add the extra language fields, image fields, file downloads, etc.. makes CMS dev with WP easier than creating custom post types and adding extra meta stuff manually...
- acescence0
I've done some simple localization by creating multiple content fields in a post/page for each language, then adding a language dropdown menu in the front end UI which sets a cookie with the preferred language, and echo the correct language field based on that.
unless you're talking about the actual UI elements in the front end, a search for localizing a theme will give you some results.
- SteveJobs0
any of you ever set up WP, expression, or any other CMS to support localized text?
googling this returns too many links on localizing WP itself
- acescence0
there's just your data model and access layer, url mapping/rewriting, caching, templating engine, media management, localization, granular admin permissions and session handling, all while keeping considerations for future extensibility in mind. then you'll have to test it to make sure there aren't injection or csrf vulnerabilities or resource issues with your code, and then document the whole thing so you can hand it off to the client. simple if you've got a six-figure budget.
you're better off starting with a framework that has a lot of this stuff built in for free than writing purely from scratch.
- acescence0
building a particle accelerator is super easy, it's just a big tube and some magnets.
- sorry but people who constantly work with ready made CMS cannot understand the feasibility of this, dont know if you're one of them. cheers, goodnightintVal
- you're one of them tho. cheers,intVal
- i've built them from scratch, so i'm intimately familiar with how NOT simple it is.acescence
- well i have built this from scratch too so please dont take your familiarity as a general case.Wth are you some kind of KIA here?intVal
- KIA here?intVal
- I 've done them from scratch as well. And when you are working on a good UI etc, its a lot work.ETM
- SteveJobs0
none of these options stand out yet. they all have pros/cons, and i can't seem to find one that's really good at working with dynamically-driven (non-static html) pages. too many lock you in to their environment. unify is not bad, but when you think about how simple their solution is, it's hard to not want to just quickly roll your own with customizations for the company's needs - but again, this isn't my project, i'm just doing a little discovery.
@intVal - i agree completely, I'm going to suggest a custom, in-house solution, but i'm pretty sure it's going to get shot down.
- intVal0
Doing this fom scratch is super easy, it's just a front end and a backend , in the front end interface you paste an editor( there are tons of editor, tiny MCE , CK editor...). For this theres no point in using wp( well only if the site is already in wp and even(because you could also just inject in wp)).
- Continuity0
Keep in mind that - as much as I personally adore concrete5 - it may or may not be for you. One of its key feature is the in-line/in-context editing directly on a page, so don't expect the typical CMS back-end with all kinds of input fields.
I admit that I have a lot of trouble imagining implementing concrete5 on a large corporate site, but then I'm also not much into all that coding and web maintenance stuff.
- ETM0
@SteveJobs
Let us know what you end up doing.
- johfiner0
I've been doing a lot of work with Joomla lately and I absolutely love it. It's far more flexible than WordPress.
You'll definitely need to spend an hour or two training the client on the backend but it's really quite simple and gives the user a lot of freedom without letting them fuck up the design.
- ETM0
Well concrete 5 has a beautiful and simple user interface for the client, but something like CMS Made Simple is dead easy to just paste your html code into the `template engine`, make some minor edits and you`re up.
- SteveJobs0
section of a large corporate site, so probably some complex front-end, jquery, js, css, html and driven by php.
also support for localized text would be nice, though i'd personally set that up dynamically through php - then again, i'm new to cms, so maybe that's how some do it so they can hand the responsibility to the content editors?
- ETM0
and if you need something more powerful with some developer/community support:
- ETM0
You mentioned "flexibility" yet said "editing static content in a php page." Is it a large site or a smaller one? Do they just want to update text/photos, or do they need multiple users, content approvals etc.?
If not too large a site and they just need to update text, look at something simpler like a content editor rather than a manager:
- ukit0
I'd say neither is necessary more "template based" and you shouldn't really run into any actual design or layout roadblocks once you understand how they work. At their core, both more or less just give you their own proprietary set of tags which can be added to any PHP based template you create.
IMO, the real difference between the two is more that Wordpress straight out of the box anyway is very much geared towards blogging. Your content (data fields) will be structured in a blog post format (title, body, date, etc), which is going to be suitable for some sites but not all. You can escape this to a certain extent by adding custom fields and so on but it's a lot of work to escape it completely.
Expression Engine on the other hand doesn't assume you are designing a blog and the first thing you will do is create your own custom data fields. Using some of the plugins that are out there, you can also do things like create fields with a variable number of items - for instance, if you had an "music album" item you could add three tracks for one or ten for another - I never saw an easy way to do this with WP.