Wordpress - a quick look

It is obvious that Wordpress is a very successful CMS (Content Managed System) and used by masses of people, therefore well past the time I should have a serious look at it.

It is very flexible, and has lots of features both free and small cost, developed around the world. However I am not convinced it is what I want. To develop quick sites I believe this can be done much easier with Weebly or Google Sites. To develop more sophisticated sites then I prefer to use native HTML5, CSS3, PHP and Jquery.

When developing more complicated sites I often find that you are trying all types of tricks to manipulate the CMS tool to do what you want, and you may just as well build it yourself. I also prefer to understand what my site does and not just understand the output.

So for the near future I will continue to use mainly HTML5 etc and Weebly.

Update

After writing this post I spent another couple of weeks giving WordPress a go, but in the end I was spending so much time trying to get it to do what I wanted when I could achieve same result in just a few minutes with native CSS and HTML. 

So I have archived site. 

Hybrid Web Development

I go in circles trying to decide whether to use WCMS (definition below) or native code (HTML, CSS and JavaScript). I prefer using native code but worry that large sites would become unmaintainable unless I use tools such as PHP so that common code can be held in single files, but this adds more complexity.
Content Manages Sites I have used include Weebly and Google Sites. Both quite easy and powerful but then I worry about being at the mercy of a third party who could change or cease to provide the service but I do like the ease of having a web presence without having to deal with or pay an ISP (Internet Services Provider).

Hybrid approach

I like to combine the two approaches, using the CMS to provide menu which is then easily maintainable and provide internet services, but the bulk of the page is built in native HTML and CSS which can then be transferred to another environment if necessary.

CSS & JavaScript

When using a CMS site it is important to consider how much control you have over CSS and whether JavaScript and hence Jquery is supported. If so then you have a lot more control and capability to write the pages as you want.

Web Content Management System (WCMS)

I have lifted this definition from Wikipedia.

A web content management system (WCMS)is a software system that provides website authoring, collaboration, and administration tools designed to allow users with little knowledge of web programming languages or markup languages to create and manage website content with relative ease. A robust WCMS provides the foundation for collaboration, offering users the ability to manage documents and output for multiple author editing and participation. Most systems use a content repository or a database to store page content, metadata, and other information assets that might be needed by the system.

Back To Basics

I have decided to explore this approach in detail whilst developing Back To Basics web site using Weebly and record my progress on this blog.

Using Weebly with multiple writers developers

I have used Weebly for several years to create web sites but always been the only developer. However now a small team of us are going to work together to create a site and we needed a method to share photos that we may use on this site.

I did this by creating a second Weebly site just to act as a photo library, with large, medium and small versions of the photos.  These photos can then be included in the main site by referencing their URL. This video shows how to do this with various browsers.

Although written specifically for the team the method can easily be adopted by other groups.

Nerd flash 

Did you notice seamless switch from Mac to Internet Explorer on XP and back again. I had all browsers set up one behind the other plus IE running in Virtual Box XP machine, QuickTime screencast recorded the XP guest machine just fine. 

Recorded on iMac 21.5", Mountain Lion.