Anyone with Web developement/Design experience?

Over the years I've had an aspiration to run a PC Hardware review site, I dont have enough experience to make one quite like I'd want to: So Initially I looked for a good CMS to manage all the 'back-end' stuff for me. I used Drupal Gardens for 2-3 Years, It didnt really get where I wanted it to. I would get stuck on how to implement certain features or arranging content. I recently decided to go full Noob and try Wix.

Aesthetically speaking, its much better than Drupal Gardens. But its plug-ins are limited and I'm a bit stuck as far as Implementing things such as a Community Forum and properly organizing Articles, Pictures, Tags ETC. Here's what I have so far with Wix: http://gradyturner95.wix.com/pchub
And Drupal Gardens: https://www.drupalgardens.com/mysites/1024126/login

Right now, I'm not trying to do any SEO(Search Engine Optimization), or making sure 'PCHub' as a domain/site name is even available. Its more of simply designing it.

So long-story short: Im looking for someone that has a good bit of experience with any CMS, or just can tell me how I should go about accomplishing some of these things.

Thanks,

- Grady

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Originally Posted by AOD_Grady666

Over the years I've had an aspiration to run a PC Hardware review site, I dont have enough experience to make one quite like I'd want to: So Initially I looked for a good CMS to manage all the 'back-end' stuff for me. I used Drupal Gardens for 2-3 Years, It didnt really get where I wanted it to. I would get stuck on how to implement certain features or arranging content. I recently decided to go full Noob and try Wix.

Aesthetically speaking, its much better than Drupal Gardens. But its plug-ins are limited and I'm a bit stuck as far as Implementing things such as a Community Forum and properly organizing Articles, Pictures, Tags ETC. Here's what I have so far with Wix: http://gradyturner95.wix.com/pchub
And Drupal Gardens: https://www.drupalgardens.com/mysites/1024126/login

Right now, I'm not trying to do any SEO(Search Engine Optimization), or making sure 'PCHub' as a domain/site name is even available. Its more of simply designing it.

So long-story short: Im looking for someone that has a good bit of experience with any CMS, or just can tell me how I should go about accomplishing some of these things.

Thanks,

- Grady

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You might look into Google Sites. I'm not sure how well their stuff would work for you though. I only have minor experience with one of the more code heavy website creators, and I'm far from a great coder, or even a coder in general. You might start looking at books on how to create websites and stuff like that.

You've said a lot of things here, but I might have some suggestions for you. In a separate thread I talked about Wordpress, which is just one of several CMS' out there that can adequately handle the backend aspect of maintaining a site. The question is, what exactly are you looking for, and are you planning to maintain it yourself? I mention Wordpress because it sounds to me like it would do what you need it to, and not because I'm an evangelist bent on forcing everyone to use it. It's just that WP is pretty damned flexible and fits most use-cases.

Admittedly though, web design and development has changed drastically over the past 5-10 years or so. Jumping into the field is a little bit different than it used to be. Wordpress is one of dozens of tools out there that will provide you with the functionality you need to achieve your goals, but in order to really take advantage of what WP has to offer, you've got to do some work.

You said community forum, are you referring specifically to a forum like AOD's? Are you looking to start a forum community with vbulletin or IPB?

Are you just looking for a way to publish reviews on various pieces of hardware? What is it that the Wix / Drupal garden sites don't do that you need them to?

It would be good to know exactly what kind of functionality you're looking for in order to give you a recommendation. But truthfully, most people who aren't interested in tackling all of the things necessary to put together a current, relevant web front usually hire someone to do their dirty work for them. I don't know if that's defeating the purpose of what you had in mind, but it would good to have some more details.

In the context of a blog, where you want to publish articles and associate them with categories, tags, etc, Wordpress would be right down your alley, and there are a couple different ways you can approach it.

Long story short, more details required. :)

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Originally Posted by AOD_Guybrush

Sorry for the book, I kind of got on a soapbox :)

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Thought this might be appropriate here too ;)

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Originally Posted by AOD_31drew31

Thought this might be appropriate here too ;)

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Fortunately for me this book was warranted. A lot of discussion is required for these kinds of things. Otherwise you just end up wasting time, and I'm trying to do him a favor by asking questions.

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Originally Posted by AOD_Guybrush

Fortunately for me this book was warranted. A lot of discussion is required for these kinds of things. Otherwise you just end up wasting time, and I'm trying to do him a favor by asking questions.

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Touche

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Originally Posted by AOD_Guybrush

You've said a lot of things here, but I might have some suggestions for you. In a separate thread I talked about Wordpress, which is just one of several CMS' out there that can adequately handle the backend aspect of maintaining a site. The question is, what exactly are you looking for, and are you planning to maintain it yourself? I mention Wordpress because it sounds to me like it would do what you need it to, and not because I'm an evangelist bent on forcing everyone to use it. It's just that WP is pretty damned flexible and fits most use-cases.

Admittedly though, web design and development has changed drastically over the past 5-10 years or so. Jumping into the field is a little bit different than it used to be. Wordpress is one of dozens of tools out there that will provide you with the functionality you need to achieve your goals, but in order to really take advantage of what WP has to offer, you've got to do some work.

You said community forum, are you referring specifically to a forum like AOD's? Are you looking to start a forum community with vbulletin or IPB?

Are you just looking for a way to publish reviews on various pieces of hardware? What is it that the Wix / Drupal garden sites don't do that you need them to?

It would be good to know exactly what kind of functionality you're looking for in order to give you a recommendation. But truthfully, most people who aren't interested in tackling all of the things necessary to put together a current, relevant web front usually hire someone to do their dirty work for them. I don't know if that's defeating the purpose of what you had in mind, but it would good to have some more details.

In the context of a blog, where you want to publish articles and associate them with categories, tags, etc, Wordpress would be right down your alley, and there are a couple different ways you can approach it.

Long story short, more details required. :)

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by AOD_31drew31

Thought this might be appropriate here too ;)

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Quote:

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Originally Posted by AOD_Guybrush

Fortunately for me this book was warranted. A lot of discussion is required for these kinds of things. Otherwise you just end up wasting time, and I'm trying to do him a favor by asking questions.

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It's absolutely helpful, definitely NOT a TLDR. I havnt checked into wordpress, Ill take a look. As far as community forums: I've seen alot of great forums created w/ vBulletin. Ive looked at their site, its $200+ to purchase. I don't really have that kind of expendable income right now.
There are other things that are contingent upon me justifying the price of vBulletin, Domain name, and hosting. I need to have subjects(IE: Hardware, which I have, its not really in 'reviewable' condition. Or its in my Rig) to create the content on. Distributor/Manufacturer sponsorship would be EXCELLENT, but they will ask to see any of the work or reviews I've previously done(which makes sense). So these things might be a quote 'price of entry'. I might want to talk with you a little in TS if you get a chance.

Thanks Guybrush-

I've never personally used it for anything, but there's a pretty solidly-supported wordpress forum plugin called BuddyPress (like most CMS', if there's functionality you need, it can usually be added via plugin). That might suit your needs and you'd have integration with your site right out of the box. It's not as fully-fledged as vBulletin, but it honestly shouldn't need to be. vBulletin has too much stuff for its own good :P BuddyPress is also free, as is WordPress.

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There are other things that are contingent upon me justifying the price of vBulletin, Domain name, and hosting. I need to have subjects(IE: Hardware, which I have, its not really in 'reviewable' condition. Or its in my Rig) to create the content on. Distributor/Manufacturer sponsorship would be EXCELLENT, but they will ask to see any of the work or reviews I've previously done(which makes sense). So these things might be a quote 'price of entry'. I might want to talk with you a little in TS if you get a chance.

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This sounds like a perfect scenario for custom post types (using WordPress). In this case you could create a CPT called "Hardware", and in that CPT, you could define any number of custom metadata taxonomy that you need in order to associate certain information to a piece of hardware...but I'm thinking this might need to get a bit more intricate though. Hardware might not be specific enough, especially if you want to track certain kinds of hardware. So if you had a specific subset in mind, for example you want to provide reviews for just video cards, case equipment, lighting, etc, each of these things could be a CPT. And so in your admin interface you would have physical menus for each of these (you'd need to do a little legwork to register these CPT). So when you want to review a particular video card, you'd simply create a new "post/page" inside your "video cards" section.

I mentioned custom taxonomy, here's how that would look overall: (bear in mind that taxonomy refers to a system of tagging, so there'd need to be some thought done before this is implemented)

Category = big bucket, tag = small bucket.

Categories: Events, Venues, Destinations in Europe, Beaches.
Tags: Rock concert, Wedding, Barmitzvah (sp?), Minsk, Daytona

** note: tags can be hierarchical (with parent, child relationships) or not, and you can apply more than one tag or category. But don't call these items tags or categories, because they are only physical representations of the tags or categories you see in a default "post". Video cards or power supplies would each be its own "post" type, with its own interpretation and subset of categories and/or tags. So tags could be called "features". and categories could be called "properties" or some other descriptive term.

Video cards

• brand type (Idk all the brands of GPUs so imagine here) (Asus, Dell, ATI, etc)
• performance level (high, mid, low-end)
• loudness factor (super loud, not so loud, kinda quiet, super quiet, did you hear something?)
• some other thing with tags (something, some other thing, another thing, last thing)

Power Supplies

• also has brand type (but this brand type is separate from video card brand types) (Packard Bell, Toshiba, H2, blah, blah)
• Size factor (massive, mid size, tiny) (size ranges might be necessary)
• Power range (450w-500w, 550w-750w, 800w-1000w)

Etc
Etc


Once you have your custom taxonomy broken down (you'd want to decide which information can be driven as a category or tag [aka taxonomy]), the rest can be leveraged as custom fields, and there's a dozen ways to skin the cat on this one:

Video cards:

• Tech specs
  
  • clock speed
  • some other fancy metric
  • another fancy metric
• overall impression (numeric value, or stars or something)
• Price range (or something)
• Sites that sell this product (separate direct links or nah?)

These are just examples, but these are things you can offer each individual CPT with very little work. You'd need to leverage WP's options API to create the fields you need, or you can take a different route and use something like Advanced Custom Fields, in which case you can manually build out custom fields using the backend UI, but this has some drawbacks of its own.

Anyway, as I said (and as can be clearly seen above), there's a ton of discussion to have about this stuff. I'm glad to sit down with you and talk more about it.

@Grady, sorry I missed you the other night. Got swamped with work. Anyway, feel free to come chat whenever you're on TS. I should be on pretty much every evening after 5PM EST

Since I use Joomla I'd suggest it. Word Press and I don't work very well together. I am sure each has its benefits and weaknesses over one another.

Speaking as someone with a background in Front End Design (I basically make things that look pretty but have no substance until a developer comes in and sorts it). It's going to sound cliche and silly and some of my developer mates will scoff and chastise me but honestly Squarespace might be a good option for you. It's simplified enough that literally ANYONE can do it while leaving room on the back end for those that want to get into development or tweak it that much more. Usually these days signing up for it usually includes a domain for a year so you'd be killing two birds and I find that it looks a lot less scary when you're making it.

That said if you've got some objection to it there are other methods such as wordpress (although the simplicity of this is debatable) and Wix as you've quite found.

Beyond that I may be better served giving you advice on presentation if that's even something you're considering at this point.

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Originally Posted by AOD_z404Error

Since I use Joomla I'd suggest it. Word Press and I don't work very well together. I am sure each has its benefits and weaknesses over one another.

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I won't knock Joomla. Even ExpressionEngine has its qualities. At the end of the day, it's all about context and picking the tool that makes the most sense for you.