Attackr.com » Developer Portal for web designers, developers and programmers http://www.attackr.com Come To Share, Come To Learn Tue, 20 Dec 2011 13:09:25 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.3.1 How To Fix Your Sucky Website With Minimal Effort http://www.attackr.com/how-to-fix-your-sucky-website-with-minimal-effort/ http://www.attackr.com/how-to-fix-your-sucky-website-with-minimal-effort/#comments Tue, 03 Mar 2009 16:16:59 +0000 Gregory Milby http://www.attackr.com/?p=329 We do not have en excuse for having a sucky website anymore.  There are so many resources on the internet that anyone can have a decent looking website with a little work.  Some people have a natural gift for creating a wicked website – while someone may be a very strong coder without an artistic gene in their body.  With a little planning - anyone can have a website they can be proud of – or at least not embarrassed with anymore.

A site like this one would be a good place to start to get the feel of how to use a template before experimenting with a more complex css templates like the ones found here.   Swapping around your look & feel gets easier once you get used to how CSS and xhtml are laid out. You’ll soon find that most of the templates start to look alike other than color choices, graphic style and flavor (size of object/text/etc…).

 The template resources are virtually endless. This google search  produced over 500,000 pages of free css templates sites.  Like anything else, just because it’s free doesn’t mean it is good or ‘what you should use’.  So if you have any choice dilema’s while browsing templates, remember to try to pick simple to start with until you get used to the designers layout style. 

If you have a good design, but need to spruce it up a little, there are a lot of resources on the web for creating cutting edge menu navigation,  editing/creating graphics, and a mind boggling 16 milion sites waiting to give you ideas for gadgets & widgets to add to your site. 

There is no crime in asking for advice either… There is a seemingly endless line of patient people waiting to help you. Just a word of advice, try to examine the work of the person you’re about to ask advice of – they may not share your same goals, taste or style.  If you’re not sure how to view their work – ask them.  They will usually have several samples they will be proud to show you.  If they don’t – move on to another web design advice forum.

There are some complete solutions out there – just in case you are at your wits end – and just want to be free to focus on the content.  Don’t forget blogs (in the rare case you’re delima can be solved with one of these type of solutions). Likewise, there is usually some really good design support for some of the bigger solutions like Joomla or WordPress.

Reference used for this post:

http://www.splashup.com/

http://www.joomla.org/

http://wordpress.org/

http://www.google.com/webhp?hl=en

http://www.alistapart.com/

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]]> http://www.attackr.com/how-to-fix-your-sucky-website-with-minimal-effort/feed/ 2 The Top 10 Open Source Content Management Systems http://www.attackr.com/the-top-10-open-source-content-management-systems/ http://www.attackr.com/the-top-10-open-source-content-management-systems/#comments Fri, 10 Oct 2008 10:00:14 +0000 Web Developer News http://www.attackr.com/?p=154 One of the main characteristics of Web 2.0 publishing is the change from HTML websites to DHTML Content Management Systems. Another is the Open Source model itself, leveraging user communities for development of the CMS platforms. Content Management Systems include all of the Web 2.0 calling cards – social networking, blogs, forums, wikis, image galleries, comment threads, ecommerce, voting, social bookmarking, tags, embedded video, and many other features through extensions and modules. Consequently, the CMS is the preferred platform for most web designers building sites today. Working full time in Open Source CMS development for the last four years, we decided to review the best and create a top 10 list at our website to see if developers agree on which publishing platform is tops for Web 2.0.

The Top 10 Open Source Content Management Systems:

1. Drupal
2. WordPress
3. Joomla
4. Media Wiki
5. Liferay
6. TYPO3
7. Moodle
8. Dolphin
9. Pligg
10. Movable Type

Honorable Mention:
Xoops, Geeklog, e107, Mambo, Nucleus

We gave the top spot to Drupal because of its ease of use, vast number of modules, great user, developer, and support community. WordPress is really a close second, but is best for single blog websites and personal publishing, lacking many of the social networking functions, ecommerce facilities, forums, wikis, etc. used on more expansive sites. Joomla has one of the largest user communities of any CMS, and everything you need to develop social networks, ecommerce, & archive sites, but includes too many commercial products for Open Source development, and is more difficult to learn than the top two.

After the top three, the list includes more specialized CMS platforms, like Media Wiki for collaborative document authoring, Moodle for education, and Pligg for social bookmarking. TYPO3, Dolphin, and Liferay all offer unique feature sets and a distinct design that sets them apart from other platforms. Movable Type is a questionable choice for the last spot, and will face strong competition from other blog platforms such as XOOPS, Geeklog, and Nucleus.

For more information or to see the full review and discuss the rankings, visit webdevnews.net.

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