Ohh and to check out a buddypress enabled and wordpress 2.9.2 powered site of mine just to check out what you can do (no plug honest, it's a non for profit organisation)
Tarsus Fellowship
Tarsus Fellowship
Recommend me a Web CMS
- Thread starter Draeger
- Start date
Soldato
- Joined
- 7 Mar 2005
- Posts
- 19,616
- Location
- LU7
OK, you said!
What plugins would you recommend to help me make a sleek website for a high school? The current one is pretty poor and I'd like to improve it and make it look more modern. I'd quite like drop-down menus on the new site; I could code them manually and create a CSS file for them, but if there's a plugin for Wordpress that could take care of creating and styling the drop-down menus for me that'd be great.
Wordpress 3.0 has built in drop down menu support. Quite a few themes already support them, the default theme called twentyten supports custom menus, custom headers and is a modern nice clean theme you can build on. Google wordpress child themes and you can make your own theme that inherits the basics from twentyten with only your changes overiding the twentyten defaults. I reckon you can make a decent enough theme in a couple of hours with very little CSS, HTML or Wordpress knowledge.
If you stick with twentyten, it will even crop images for you to use in the header!
If you stick with twentyten, it will even crop images for you to use in the header!
I agree to leave it in the forum to help others, but just in case the OP has 101 questions which just clog up the thread.
gord, 3.0 only seems to bring improvements so far to me. custom menus is just one of the major changes for the better. the only issues I'm seeing are related to buddypress which is a major plugin and these are being worked on. plugins are the life and soul of wordpress and a few of my sites have loads and it can be an issue to track down a bug or 10. I'd try 3.0 on a non production site first to see if your current theme is broken, and then go from there.
gord, 3.0 only seems to bring improvements so far to me. custom menus is just one of the major changes for the better. the only issues I'm seeing are related to buddypress which is a major plugin and these are being worked on. plugins are the life and soul of wordpress and a few of my sites have loads and it can be an issue to track down a bug or 10. I'd try 3.0 on a non production site first to see if your current theme is broken, and then go from there.
Soldato
- Joined
- 7 Mar 2005
- Posts
- 19,616
- Location
- LU7
Typical in that they brought it out when you thought it was still in beta/RC status?And Marc.. typical they bring 3.0 now.. time to see what it does to my current project..
Soldato
- Joined
- 7 Mar 2005
- Posts
- 19,616
- Location
- LU7
Ah right. So a few weeks earlier would have helped?
Custom navigation isn't important to you then gord but I reckon some of the other improvements might be. I've noticed that 3.0 uses less db accesses and runs a tad faster. Security wise it *should* be better going forward to. Nearly every theme I've tried that doesn't use buddypress as a basis works 100% too
I've used either joomla or wordpress on all my sites and have done themes and plugins for both.
Joomla isn't as complicated to use as people male out, I admit I was lost when I first started but I soon realised this was mainly due to poor documentation. I did write quite a good post on how to make your own theme for joomla in this forum if anyone is interested. It really is a lot simpler than their documentary makes it sound.
It is very extensive and you can do pretty much anything with it BUT I only tend to use it on sites I will be updating, as the backend can be quite convoluted and generally unintuitive for someone not confident with computers. I also find it a lot easier to code plugins for it than wordpress.
Wordpress is very good and the back is easy to use even for clients not confident with computers. Navigating all the php can be a pain in the arse though especially if you're just trying to alter the payout of some widgets or something. It was always less of a CMS than joomla with some glaring floors, (no inbuilt menu structuring) etc. I haven't tried 3.0 yet though but a lot of it seems to have been addressed so maybe i'll just stick with wordpress from now on.
I would say it is generally easier to write themes for Joomla than Wordpress though once you know what you're doing.
Joomla isn't as complicated to use as people male out, I admit I was lost when I first started but I soon realised this was mainly due to poor documentation. I did write quite a good post on how to make your own theme for joomla in this forum if anyone is interested. It really is a lot simpler than their documentary makes it sound.
It is very extensive and you can do pretty much anything with it BUT I only tend to use it on sites I will be updating, as the backend can be quite convoluted and generally unintuitive for someone not confident with computers. I also find it a lot easier to code plugins for it than wordpress.
Wordpress is very good and the back is easy to use even for clients not confident with computers. Navigating all the php can be a pain in the arse though especially if you're just trying to alter the payout of some widgets or something. It was always less of a CMS than joomla with some glaring floors, (no inbuilt menu structuring) etc. I haven't tried 3.0 yet though but a lot of it seems to have been addressed so maybe i'll just stick with wordpress from now on.
I would say it is generally easier to write themes for Joomla than Wordpress though once you know what you're doing.
re: above post about themes, wordpress is now actively encouraging child themes. This removes a load of stuff if you wish, and with custom menus and custom header support just tweaking a theme is quite easy now. I've never needed to write a plugin as I can always find one that does what I need, however that could change!
Wordpress is still really about blogs though you can use it to write a cms type website. A lot of things are a bit OTT if you don't have a blog based website though, like tags etc.
The easiest cms I have used is cms made simple, up and running in no time at all...
Wordpress is still really about blogs though you can use it to write a cms type website. A lot of things are a bit OTT if you don't have a blog based website though, like tags etc.
The easiest cms I have used is cms made simple, up and running in no time at all...