SEM Tycoon

#1 (permalink)

I'm developing a music industry resource/networking site for this domain, and will publish articles, interviews with industry leaders, a podcast, blogs. Q&A's, etc. I'll also create a nice new forum and get as many industry players as possible posting early to get things going.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to a nice, simple CMS I could use for somethign like this, or do I even need a CMS at all? I'm using Joomla for my current magazine style site but would rather something easier for this site.

Any opinions on CMS are appreciated... Let me know if you think it's a potential moneymaker as well - I've got the contacts to provide top quality content.

#2 (permalink)

Wordpress.org - VERY simple, but doesn't look so in the first glance, many of the biggest blogs around use this one.

A.H

#3 (permalink)

Wordpress is impressive. You can do literally anything with it. You can even set it up so people won't even realize it's a blog!

#4 (permalink)

Use Joomla. It'll be better for the content that you plan on creating over WordPress. It's a good choice if you decide to stick with it.

Other than Joomla, Drupal is pretty impressive also.

#5 (permalink)

Hoang, he's looking for something simple, Wordpress is the simplest one out there, yet it can show some impressive results.

A.H

#6 (permalink)

Joomla IS simple. I know he said he wanted something simpler but Joomla by far is the easiest CMS I've worked with. It can be as simple as you want it to be or it can be complex.

People have already suggested WordPress so I was just throwing in my opinion about Joomla in case anyone else wants to give it a try.

- Thien

#7 (permalink)

Easy dude, no one told you not suggest Joomla or that Joomla isn't simple, i just pointed this out because he said "I'm using Joomla for my current magazine style site but would rather something easier for this site."

A.H

#8 (permalink)

I know, I'm not mad or anything :P

#9 (permalink)

Thanks for the idas guys. The thing with this site is that I want to get it up with minimal investment. I plan on buying a vBulletin license and having a really nice skin custom designed for it, and it seems you can't get a decent Joomla theme made for less than $800 or so. I've even thought about making it strictly vBulletin and just having a section of the forum dedicated to articles, etc. But I'd like to have an actual site so that it looks a bit more professional and gives me more advertising and affiliate options.

#10 (permalink)

The thing is, Joomla is probably the easiest CMS to skin for me since it only requires two files: index.php and template_css.css. If you can get a regular html/css design made for about $200, it'll only cost about $50-$100 more to integrate it with Joomla.

With Joomla, all you're really doing is adding the module positions to the HTML part of the template and you're all ready to go. With a few minor adjustments and additions to the CSS file, you're all set.

btw, where did you get that $800 price from?!

#11 (permalink)

That just seems to be the type of price I get from any web designer I talk to. I don't know a thing about CSS - is it hard to learn? Does template_css.css take care of all the formatting of content pages, etc. for the entire site?

#12 (permalink)

Yes, Joomla templates have two main files: the index.php and template_css.css. They're both linked together so the styles that you put on the css will apply to your whole Joomla website.

HTML and CSS is very easy to learn (see w3schools).

If you look around a few webmaster forums, you can get a nice looking design for a good price along with the coding. From there, integrating with Joomla should take about.. 10 minutes tops, and then another 10-20 minutes to customize the CSS of the stuff Joomla outputs to your liking.

To be honest, getting a nice looking Joomla template shouldn't cost more than $300 unless you're getting custom modules/components designed for you.

#13 (permalink)

Interesting... Maybe I'll try screwing around with one myself to get the feel of it. What's the best way to edit the CSS file?

#14 (permalink)

My favorite free code editor is PSPad ... www.pspad.com/en/
I also like Homesite and Dreamweaver, but those cost $$

You can work on the index.php and template_css.css file locally on your computer, and upload it to the correct location when you're ready (PSPad also has the ability to connect to FTP within the program and upload the file immediately from there). It is vastly easier to edit these locally with a proper code editor, versus trying to do it from the Edit screen within Joomla (the Edit HTML or Edit CSS buttons in the Template Manager). With a local editor you'll have color coding, search and replace, etc etc etc.

If you're "just" starting with CSS/XHTML for the first time I would personally recommend you purchase a book. You can definitely find every bit of the same information for free online, but it is spread over a large number of various websites, and if you don't want to deal with figuring it out, the book will tell you right up front (and often informs you of the sites the techniques originated on). I did it the hard way, learning everything from the web first, then turning to a book to refine that knowledge.... once I got a book I seriously kicked myself because it would have saved me a few hundred hours haha. The book I went with was CSS Mastery by Andy Budd - though there's a number of them to consider, such as Bulletproof Web Design by Dan Cederholm, Eric Meyer on CSS, and of course Designing with Web Standards (2nd Edition) by Jeffery Zeldman. I don't think any of those books are for a complete beginner, so you might want to at least have a look at a few CSS tutorials online to get your feet wet first.

I agree that making a website layout for Joomla is really no harder than making one for any other site, so long as you're keeping things relatively simple. If you try delving into making different things happen or show up depending on whether a user is registered or not, etc, it can start to get more tricky at that point.

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#15 (permalink)

You can use notepad but I like Crimson Editor because it has colored lines so it's easier to differentiate between certain elements.

#16 (permalink)

Thanks a ton for all the help guys... Does the CSS file determine the position of everything in Joomla as well?

#17 (permalink)

Well, the HTML and CSS work together to do that But CSS does most of the styling (font colors, padding, borders, etc.)

#18 (permalink)

I see... Well I'm a fairly fast learner, although most of the time it's by trial and error. How long do you suppose it would take me to learn enough to create a simple but clean looking Joomla template? I'm going to hire a graphic designer of course, it's just getting the template and everything set up that's killing me.

#19 (permalink)

I've used Joomla before and after about a few hours of playing with it I got the hang of it.. Its a pretty simple CMS.

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#20 (permalink)

It'll take a day or two to learn basic html/css and if you understand that, Joomla templating will be a breeze.