Forum Project: Discuss the technical specs of creating your site

[UncleSalty]

Ok guys, as others have noticed this project has gotten a bit off track. I agree w/ hummusx that a big reason for this is that the step we are all on is much broader than simply "picking a domain name and host" and we should probably flesh out some details at this point.

I am personally finding myself a bit lost at moving forward from a basic Joomla installation to figuring out exactly what modules, layout, theme, etcetera I need to make my site look the way I want.

Here is my main disconnect: The only web page I've ever created before this project I made using Frontpage, and never bothered to actually learn anything about HTML or CSS. At this point I'm going through a great book on XHTML and CSS (Head First: A Brain Friendly Guide to HTML and CSS - I highly recommend this if you are a complete web building novice and want to understand how the languages work).

However, the newer CMS programs like Drupal and Joomla are all SQL/PHP based, which I haven't even begun to understand conceptually. As far as I can tell, all of the HTML and CSS code is buried in the database programming and is not directly viewable by the user. As a result, I have no idea how the themes (styles) for these applications work and thus have no idea how to customize them to look the way I want.

Here are the questions and topics I need addressed by someone more knowledgeable:

1. I've gotten the basic Joomla installation installed on my site. At this point there is all this sample garbage (Newsflash, fake articles, a fake poll, Joomla license info, etc...) sitting on my site that I want to get rid of. Do I just wipe all of that stuff out before starting to enter my content? How do I make sure I've gotten rid of all the Joomla references?

2. Themes: At this point my understanding of a theme is that it's a CSS stylesheet plus some other programming that's specific to the CMS. Let's say I've found a theme I like in terms of layout. (The top menu links are where I want, I like the number of columns and the arrangement of the menus etc. on the screen) If I want to customize the background colors and logos where do I go to do this? Is it as simple as finding those sections in the stylesheet portion of the theme package? Is that stylesheet written in normal CSS that my book will help me learn to customize?

3. Site strucure for beginners: I have a basic idea of what my final website should contain but I don't really know how to go about planning the structure on paper. Can someone walk us through your basic "back of the envelope" process for sketching out your site before you actually start entering the content?

4. PHP/SQL: As I mentioned, I am finding that reading a basic guide to XHTML and CSS is really helping to ramp up my understanding of how a page can be designed using those tools. Is there value in reading a similar beginners guide to the database web-programming that Joomla uses? If so, please recommend one so I can pick it up soon.

5. Adsense: Once I am finally able to build my site, get the content added, and make it look nice and professional. How do I add Adsense to it? Is there some sort of module included with Joomla that I just have to install?


Do the rest of you feel like you're having the same roadblocks as I am, or are there other issues holding us back that I haven't covered? Please chime in on this thread so we can get ourselves moving forward again.

Thanks,

Salty

[Frinkenstein]

I can't help you on all your questions, but I'll do my best on a few of them...

1. I once tried a joomla based site and had considerable difficulty getting it up and running the way I wanted. I would advise you to play around in your administration panel and experiment with it before deleting anything. If you go and delete everything you'll have no idea how to add new info or where that info should be going. I'd suggest adding your content, by simply modifying the pre-exisiting content.

2. Not exactly sure, but you should be able to change the background color of your template without too much difficulty. My site is powered by wordpress right now. I'd suggest using wordpress over joomla if you can make it work with the type of site you want to run. I've found wordpress to be very easy to deal with in terms of adding new themes and modifying those themes to suit your needs. They have a built in theme editor you can use. Knowlege of php would be beneficial, but I've been able to make some modifications without that knowlege.

3. I can't help you with that... Sounds like you need a book on website design.

4. Can't help you there.

5. Yes, there is an adsense module you can install. I had difficulty incorporating it into the default template, but it CAN be done.

Like I said, I'm using a wordpress template and have found it VERY easy to deal with in terms of instaling my theme. Plus there are lots of plugins you can install to add varying degrees of functionality to your site. My site IS a blog, but I think you could use a wordpress template for a non-blog site as well. You'd just have to make some modifications to the template to suit your needs. I think this could be done without too much difficulty.

Good luck!

BTW, you can check my site out at http://www.richfromyourhome.com

I've installed the adsense plugin already, but I'm putting off on adding the adsense for a week or two while my traffic builds. I'm not sure if that even matters though...

[JoshK]

For anybody having trouble with joomla may I suggest wordpress? It seems much easier to me (i'm a big dummy at this stuff) and there's literally thousands of themes to choose from.

Cheers,

Josh

[jaym]

Switch to Wordpress. It has a ton of plugins available and can do most of the stuff that Joomla can and is a lot simpler to use.

[UncleSalty]

If anyone is too stubborn (like me) to give up on Joomla just yet, I found a really awesome tutorial site that is helping me understand some of the concepts I was missing:

http://www.screenbooks.net/joomla

There is also a pretty good quick-start guide that helped me understand the basic relationship of Sections/Categories/Content Items:

http://www.netshinesoftware.com/down...tart%201.0.pdf

Enjoy!

[Freakin]

To be honest I don't think most of you should be using Joomla or even wordpress for this project. The idea is to make an SEO-optimized, content based site for the purpose of displaying adsense or ypn ads, no?

I doubt most people are going through the trouble of optimizing their joomla or wordpress installs for google or other search engines. Google doesn't take too fondly to URL that include "id=". Are you all using modules like OpenSEF to rewrite your URLs?

Just find the design of a site you like and use a WYSIWYG editor like frontpage or dreamweaver (or just copy the page you like and put in your own content).

There should only be 5-10 pages of content at the most to start out most of these sites.

Why do some of you feel that joomla or wordpress is better for these sites than HTML? A pretty site doesn't matter if search engines won't let people find it.

You should spend your time on page titles, image tags and directory submission instead of learning wordpress or joomla.

[Frinkenstein]

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I doubt most people are going through the trouble of optimizing their joomla or wordpress installs for google or other search engines. Google doesn't take too fondly to URL that include "id=".

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It is VERY easy to make search engine somewhat-friendly URL's with wordpress. It's a standard option that you can enable. And you can easily install a plugin that makes your pages very search engine friendly. This is also not that difficult with a joomla plugin. Really, this is almost a non-issue in wordpress.

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Why do some of you feel that joomla or wordpress is better for these sites than HTML? A pretty site doesn't matter if search engines won't let people find it.

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not only are the wordpress sites pretty, but they are SUPER easy to set up and SUPER easy to maintain. I have found joomla to be a bit of a pain in the butt though. And like I said, the search engine problem is very easy to deal with.

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You should spend your time on page titles, image tags and directory submission instead of learning wordpress or joomla.

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I disagree... You should be spending your time building quality content. Unless you've managed to find a niche with very little competition. You need to get backlinks in order to get to the top of google. And even if you do manage to find a low competition niche, it's probably a small niche (or there would already be competition) and you won't get much traffic anyway.

Quality content is the hardest part, but the most important part IMO.

If you just slap up a site with some adsense, you're not going to make any money even if your URL's are search engine friendly.

Also, if you want to go the directory submission route, you should definitely farm that out to a dude in India. Trust me, it's not worth your time to try to submit to tons of directories yourself. It takes much longer than you think it will. It is well worth it to pay some dude in india $20-40 to do this part for you. They'll submit to hundreds of directories for cheap. If you look on the digital point forums or the sitepoint forums, you can get a recommendation for a reliable directory submission service.

[elus2]

it's pretty easy to turn your urls into something like www.somewordpresssite.com/some-post-etc/

this site seems to have some really good information on things to do http://www.geek-notes.com/wordpress/...earch-engines/ to boost search engine rankings

i recommend wordpress for guys that just want to crank out articles for their audience

[Frinkenstein]

I would also add that for SEO, you should definitely have a proper google "Sitemap" set up. If you're using wordpress, you can download a plugin that will do this for you with a simple click of a button. SUPER SUPER easy and very important.

[Frinkenstein]

[ QUOTE ]
it's pretty easy to turn your urls into something like www.somewordpresssite.com/some-post-etc/

this site seems to have some really good information on things to do http://www.geek-notes.com/wordpress/...earch-engines/ to boost search engine rankings

[/ QUOTE ]

Great article