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Website Development Help
Penguin_Otaku
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
So I've been hired out to design a website for a small education organization and I've got a few questions since it's been a while since I've made a site in a while and I'm sure there are some cool new things I don't know about.
They want it to be pretty simple and they want to be able to update it themselves and maintain a calendar of events. Now I've made my share of sites, I've never dabbled in this, I've always just updated them through HTML. Any easy suggestions?
Also; she was wondering what pricing should be... and I have the same question because I've never done freelance web work.
Thanks fellas.
They want it to be pretty simple and they want to be able to update it themselves and maintain a calendar of events. Now I've made my share of sites, I've never dabbled in this, I've always just updated them through HTML. Any easy suggestions?
Also; she was wondering what pricing should be... and I have the same question because I've never done freelance web work.
Thanks fellas.
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seconded
as for the events stuff, there's a few plugins out there for WP
Or you could just embed a google calendar
Not enough lime in the world for this. Make absolute sure your expectations are in sync.
As for which calendar system to use, I'd second the Google Calendar plugin or similar. While your host most certainly supports php and mysql, it'd be a bit overkill to implement an entire content management system just to update a calendar.
Thirded.
You can find more information at wordpress.org. I'd go through their docs section and learn how to install the platform and build a custom theme that meets their needs. Definitely start by figuring out the content structure (Information architecture) and building out a site map. It will inform the design process and give you a much better understanding of how best to actually build the site.
It's shocking how often a client wants you to build a site BEFORE they have any idea how they want their content structured. It can be hugely problematic.
What you've also been missing out on in terms of markup over the past few years is the slow march toward HTML5 and CSS3 support amongst modern browsers. You can find some of the new tags and information about browser support at w3schools.
Our first game is now available for free on Google Play: Frontier: Isle of the Seven Gods
Ugh. w3schools sucks. See: http://www.w3fools.com for why.
OP, go to: https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/learn/ for web development help, including HTML5 and CSS3.
I use wordpress for a blog that I run and that does sound like it'd be a pretty easy way to go about the updates.
I'm assuming their layout is adjustable with HTML?
So... I do web dev professionally (just to get that out of the way) and I use Drupal for it. http://drupal.org/ (runs stuff like... http://www.whitehouse.gov )
If you have a serious ambition to get into web development, then I'd advise you heavily to look into Drupal as your platform of choice. Wordpress is awesome for what it is, but what it is is basically a blogging platform. They'd like to be more then that, but that reality hasn't really come to pass yet.
As far as calendaring goes, google has a fantastic product and it's pretty easy to get up and running on just about any CMS out there one way or another. For your first freelance gig, it's probably a good idea to go that direction. The primary caveat here is that of course the client may not be thrilled about having to update their calendar separately from their site, in which case, there are various tools potentially available to you. Again Drupal has a whole date/calendar set of modules that can help here (though I'm actually in the processes of trying to help clean those up a bit so... it's by no means perfect).
Also, if you take my advise and look into drupal, keep in mind the learning curve is a bit steep, but the payoff is worth it. I see you're in oklahoma as well, there's a Drupal User Group run on the rockwell campus of Francis Tuttle in OKC every 3rd Thursday from 7:30pm-9:30pm. You are very welcome to come.
For a small education organization that wants a simple site and perhaps a calendar, Drupal might be too much. WordPress is super easy to learn and add to and, while it may be primarily a blogging script, works well enough for what his client seems to want.
Wordpress is essentially a monarchy development wise, its tools are defined, developed and deployed by the elite few. Drupal's a meritocracy in which anyone with the desire, ability, and support can get new features into Drupal, making it a far more robust and capable platform. Point being, unless wordpress fits a site to the T, I'd not use it. If it does fit it, then it can't be beat. :-) The problem with that though is on-going support. Customers invariably want more, and they will outgrow the wp site at some point. Why not plan ahead, and as I said, we have a pretty good DUG here in Oklahoma, and I'd be happy to personally help from the learning perspective.
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But I've noticed that while beginning to build the website and comparing it to Wordpress code there are a lot of differences going on and a lot of integration. Not as simple as I thought it might be...
Any suggestions?
EDIT: The more I look at it it seems like there's really not that much flexibility with Wordpress. No custom headers or anything like that as far as I can see. Maybe I'm wrong, but I'm trying to make it not look like a blog.
Worth a look if you're still looking around at CMS options.
So this CMS stuff is new to me. I notice a lot of the sites I'm looking at are saying "download," could anyone explain to me what's needed to be downloaded and how that's integrated with the CMS?
Pricing out freelance work can be difficult, especially if the people you're working with aren't used to doing it. The first step is to get a detailed description of what they want done and what they expect to pay for it; then you can figure out a billing rate or flat fee that you find equitable (or not, in which case no hard feelings.)
What you don't want to do is start the project, find out it'll take a lot more work than you thought, and have to either eat the cost yourself or bill the client more than you expected.
that's why we call it the struggle, you're supposed to sweat
Go away and learn the stuff you need to know before taking on commercial work!
Basically it's a SaaS Drupal offering. It doesn't have date integration yet but it will in about say... 3 weeks (let's just say I know a guy). One of the major drives behind Drupal Gardens is evangelizing site builders (people like you) to using the Drupal platform. There are specific customizations to make using Drupal easier to learn and their support is very helpful with almost any question you could possibly have regarding getting your site working just the way you want it. It has an in browser theme builder, so you never have to touch PHP and you can still make sites like these:
http://www.ipswichalebrewery.com/
http://www.photoshopisland.com/
http://valarietravels.drupalgardens.com/
http://grinnellleadership.drupalgardens.com/
http://melaniedoane.com/
http://lauralynngill.drupalgardens.com/
And the best part is the price. For a whopping $0 you can make as many sites as you want and the pricing model is much more forgiving than wordpress.com which has you pulling in features a la carte, for a price.