Need Web building advice

[msvelev]

Hi everyone,

My parents have a small, like 5 employees, business and they need a website for it.

Since I'm a developer myself (mostly JavaEE), they turned to me for help. I have some past experience with HTML/PHP/JS but I don't have the time to create a full website, since I work from Monday to Friday.

 

I want to ask you, if you could share some solutions, that you've found in the past. Like a CMS or something similar, which I can use in combination with a database? The website needs to be mostly a catalogue of what they have in store. They sell air conditioners so there isn't much variety.

 

Any advice will be highly appreciated!

[MatazaNZ]

You could try squarespace.com with Linus' offer code if you wanted, I believe you get a free trial with it, but not too sure. 

[msvelev]

Yes I checked squarespace already but the website templates there are... too beautiful. I need something simpler and more straight to the point.

For now the fastest thing I can see is to download a ready css template and make the rest myself.

[mooseducks86]

Joomla is my favorite CMS - I have created several websites for friends and acquaintances using http://www.rockettheme.com themes (I think they're like $50 each) and have themes for wordpress as well. If you want a decent low cost host check out http://www.greengeeks.com - its like $200 for 3 years.

 

It is all modular so you can make it as simple or complex as you want - all from a gui. Joomla also has great built in features like registration system, archiving, scheduled updates (publishing articles/pages on a certain date or disabling them on a certain date).... and lots of free modules/addons and integrations to other things like phpboard or whatever... http://www.joomla.org

the extensions (paid or free) are listed at http://www.extensions.joomla.org and version 2.5 is a long term support version.

[iTzPrime]

Yes I checked squarespace already but the website templates there are... too beautiful. I need something simpler and more straight to the point.

For now the fastest thing I can see is to download a ready css template and make the rest myself.

they have also really simple and straight forward templates. I think it is the cheapest and easiest way to get a good website

[bluescreeny]

I don't really get why people use CMS' and even frameworks such as bootstrap. If you didn't write it yourself, how will you know where everything is? Might just be me, but I like keeping things clean and minimalistic. If I'm going to make a forum, I write the backend and make sure that everything is working. Then I do the client side work and styling, and by the time I'm done I know what every single feature on the site does, how to expand it, edit it and safely remove it without causing issues in the future. You don't get that with frameworks and CMS'. Plus, you have extra styling that gets loaded that you're never going to use and its just a hassle. Feels a lot better making something yourself.

 

Anyways, I dont know where I was going with this. If you need any help with the backend side of things feel free to hit me up, and I'll help to the best of my abilities.

[madknight3]

I don't really get why people use CMS' and even frameworks such as bootstrap. If you didn't write it yourself, how will you know where everything is? Might just be me, but I like keeping things clean and minimalistic. If I'm going to make a forum, I write the backend and make sure that everything is working. Then I do the client side work and styling, and by the time I'm done I know what every single feature on the site does, how to expand it, edit it and safely remove it without causing issues in the future. You don't get that with frameworks and CMS'. Plus, you have extra styling that gets loaded that you're never going to use and its just a hassle. Feels a lot better making something yourself.

 

You also don't need to reinvent the wheel. There are also other factors that come into play like time and money.

 

It's great to be able to do everything yourself like you stated, but it's not always practical to do so.

[bluescreeny]

You also don't need to reinvent the wheel. There are also other factors that come into play like time and money.

 

It's great to be able to do everything yourself like you stated, but it's not always practical to do so.

How is it not practical? It takes even more time trying to understand someone elses horrible choices of methods and development techniques than it does writing it yourself. Besides, if you, like me, enjoy programming, the backend of things can be finished in a late night of putting on a televison show in the background and smoking pot.

As for the frontend side of things, automate as much as you can over mysql and a configuration file, then include that, and you're left with about 2 hours of work and 10 lines of client side code, some disgustingly put together stylesheets (css is easy...) and a nicer and less exploitable system than you could ever get with some cms.

[madknight3]

How is it not practical?

 

I said it's not always practical. Not everyone's situation is the same. It all depends on the size of the project, what features you want/need to include, and your current familiarity with things.

 

It takes even more time trying to understand someone elses horrible choices of methods and development techniques than it does writing it yourself. 

 

Frameworks and APIs become popular for a reason. And along with them come debates about whether to use them or not. Also, not everyone else's code is bad or hard to work with.

 

 

It's hard to say what the best option is for the OP. It's also not clear how much content management the site needs. Maybe it's small, maybe the whole site needs to be able to be modified by the OPs family. Also, in my opinion, the site should be fully responsive and mobile friendly. I also feel that a good, professional, looking website makes a business more appealing these days.

 

Maybe that's too much work for the OP to do completely manually. Maybe not. I don't know. 

[MrSuperb]

I don't really get why people use CMS' and even frameworks such as bootstrap. 

 

For the same reason, car makers don't reinvent the wheel every single time they build a new car.

[harrynowl]

Wordpress is nice.

[msvelev]

The CMS' were not a good option. They're all way too complex for my family to use later.

They need to be able to add new products by themselves, so I'll code everything myself and use some help for the CSS since I'm not a designer.

I also created a little Java application from which they can add new products themselves and manage the old ones.

 

Wordpress is nice.

Its more blog oriented as far as I know.

 

Joomla is my favorite CMS - I have created several websites for friends and acquaintances using http://www.rockettheme.com themes (I think they're like $50 each) and have themes for wordpress as well. If you want a decent low cost host check out http://www.greengeeks.com - its like $200 for 3 years.

 

It is all modular so you can make it as simple or complex as you want - all from a gui. Joomla also has great built in features like registration system, archiving, scheduled updates (publishing articles/pages on a certain date or disabling them on a certain date).... and lots of free modules/addons and integrations to other things like phpboard or whatever... http://www.joomla.org

the extensions (paid or free) are listed at http://www.extensions.joomla.org and version 2.5 is a long term support version.

I tried Joomla and it was way too complex for my mother to use. But I'll check out the templates. I need something like this now. PS I checked the site it's only CMS themes I need a generic one.

As for the host I need a local one(Bulgaria)

 

they have also really simple and straight forward templates. I think it is the cheapest and easiest way to get a good website

Maybe I couldn't find the simple ones. I'll try again because it's still the easiest looking way.

 

Thanks everyone for the responses I'll let you know what happened when it's done.

[harrynowl]

Its more blog oriented as far as I know.

That's how its set up by default but you can use plugins to make it what you want and there's plenty of themes

[Torand]

I don't really get why people use CMS' and even frameworks such as bootstrap. If you didn't write it yourself, how will you know where everything is? Might just be me, but I like keeping things clean and minimalistic. If I'm going to make a forum, I write the backend and make sure that everything is working. Then I do the client side work and styling, and by the time I'm done I know what every single feature on the site does, how to expand it, edit it and safely remove it without causing issues in the future. You don't get that with frameworks and CMS'. Plus, you have extra styling that gets loaded that you're never going to use and its just a hassle. Feels a lot better making something yourself.

 

Anyways, I dont know where I was going with this. If you need any help with the backend side of things feel free to hit me up, and I'll help to the best of my abilities.

 

My day job is developing and maintaining a web based CRM/CMS, both front (staff facing) and back end of that, along with a customer facing front end website that hooks into the CRM/CMS back end to go with it.

 

We use bootstrap for both the CRM/CMS and website, along with CI for the PHP framework (if we were to re-write the project now, it will be Larvel, but alas, that's not going to happen).

 

Why?

 

Well, we a are a 2 man team with tight deadlines in a rapidly evolving and growing working environment. Bootstrap allows us to easily design new pages and adhere to a pre-defined set structure in which barely - if at all now days, beyond major releases - changes class naming structure (really handy for theme updates and swaps). CI (or Larvel), as it provides a quick an easy solution to keep code clean (well, that's more on the dev's part) and modular (retaining a tree structure), moderately efficient and leaves underling functionality present throughout the project.

 

I know how all this stuff works, but like @madknight3 says, you don't have to re-invent the wheel every time. Being able to pull up the BS CSS Page and just pick element classes to create a quick and simple - but nice looking - page (especially when themed - that's the bit we do do ourselves) saves a lot of time, in which I could be doing other more important things. It also allows us to create tools, easily, for other staff members to create pages and choose from pre defined page layouts in which we create, offloading - again - time in which can be put to better use.

 

 

If you didn't write it yourself, how will you know where everything is?

 

I agree, but then again, a good predefined structure can be as beneficial. Although, I often do - when downloading BS - clear out the classes I am not using, shrinking my footprint.

 

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