Frontend for making website like Product Hunt/ Reddit - css

I'm working on a web app which is kinda like Product Hunt. I got the back-end API working, and for the front-end I have angular js working. Thing is I don't have any experience with the look and feel of the site. Should I go about creating the css from scratch or look for an open source template online? If I go the template way, can anyone point me to a reddit/product hunt type template? Any help is appreciated.

It's kind of a personal decision, but I would suggest to go with creating it on your own with Bootstrap CSS/JS. You tagged Bootstrap in the question, so I'm assuming you have a general understanding of what it is.
Because of how popular it is, it's a great skill to learn regardless and will be useful for any web development project now and in the forseeable future. The other plus is that the learning curve isn't as steep as other parts of web development.

Related

Custom Wordpress Development - building a custom page builder

I’m looking for some advice when it comes to custom CMS development.
Wordpress has been perfect for me before a became a developer. I used to use page builders like Elementor & WPBakery.
When developing within WP, would I need to develop a page-builder for people (without coding knowledge) to edit their pages? I’m aware of Gutenberg, is that able to edit coded pages or would it not be able to read anything as it wasn’t built using Gutenberg?
If so, would it not be better to develop a Custom CMS similar to Wordpress? That way you are able to offer a blank canvas CMS that you can brand as your own?
Thanks in advance.
Interesting question! It will require some prior research on your part, as there is no obvious answer. Below are my thoughts on the matter, but it the decision is yours to make, as the project requirements are unique and also the time you can invest in it.
When developing within WP, would I need to develop a page-builder for people (without coding knowledge) to edit their pages?
A: No. Gutenberg is perfect for this.
I’m aware of Gutenberg, is that able to edit coded pages or would it not be able to read anything as it wasn’t built using Gutenberg?
A: It won't read anything that wasn't made with it, but you can try recreating those pages with it. Depends on the design, but it shouldn't be hard. If it is a site for a client, you can ask them to recreate one or two pages and see how they feel. They will answer this question for you :)
That way you are able to offer a blank canvas CMS that you can brand as your own?
A: You can "rebrand" the WordPress admin with such a plugin
If so, would it not be better to develop a Custom CMS similar to Wordpress?
A: It all depends on how comfortable you feel with WordPress and Gutenberg, code-wise. You can do pretty much anything, if you understand the PHP, React (Gutenberg is written in React) and logic behind WP, so you won't need a custom CMS. Again, it all depends on your skills with the technologies. If you rate yourself a 10/10, no need to think about it, but I guess you wouldn't be asking this question, if you were.
Pros of going with WordPress and Gutenberg:
You already have all the necessary tools.
A ton of supporting plugins, already developed by other people.
WordPress has one of the most well-maintained codebases out there, so you will have a great start, compared to building a CMS on your own. Even if you decide to create your own plugin, you have a set of rules and practices that you need to adhere to, which is great for starters. You also have all the necessary components - DB, back-end and front-end ready.
Gutenberg is pretty stable right now and you can install the plugin, because the code that is implemented in WP core is not the latest. It is great for building pages, when you don't know code. Look into all the different blocks it offers by default and think if they cover your requirements. There are also a lot of extra blocks you can add.
The popularity of Gutenberg is growing and the community is slowly, but surely moving in that direction, so making this project with Gutenberg would benefit your future career as a WP developer, if you are interested in building one.
On the point of growing community, you will find answers to a lot of the common issues.
Pros of building your own CMS:
You will see the whole process - DB design, connection and expanding. Back-end and front-end development, user authentication and administration. For me this is a con, because there are many unexpected problems, which WP has solved. It is also very time-consuming, so if you have limited time for this project, I would advise against this.
You can make a slim CMS, which covers only your requirements and you will know the ins and outs of the code, so any future changes and expansions will be easier for you to make.
As you said, it will be easier to brand as your own and you can build the Admin side of it however you want, even though there are defined UX standards, which won't allow you to go very wild. It will probably resemble the WP admin in one way or another. Check out these admin page designs, for reference.
Conclusion
Personally, I would go for WordPress and Gutenberg, because I have had mostly bad experiences with building everything on my own. I am not a good enough coder and that is OK, because I can use all of these tools, built by awesome developers before me. So please keep in mind that building your own CMS will take a lot of time, if you want to make it stable and secure. There are also alternatives to WordPress.

Is WordPress appropriate for building customized Web Apps

Our company is aiming to build an eLearning Website, we are a team of developers and our boss is suggesting using WordPress for it. We are experienced in building web apps using Codeigniter and Laravel.
I already know that we can build any type of web app using WordPress, but my questions is that is it appropriate using WordPress for building it, in terms of ease in teamwork, time, customization, easiness or anything else which you may suggest compared to usign Codeigniter or Laravel?
Yes definitely Wordpress would be a great platform to work in. Since it has extended its wings from a normal CMS to ecommerce, social networking and much more to come.
And about developing the eLearning site yes it would be definitely magnificent to develop it in wordpress as there could be some plugins for it or else you can develop one with ease.
Benefits of Working in Wordpress:
Large number of community members around to help you.
Your website will be most search engine friendly with it.
Really takes less time to develop any application because most of things are in built and you can also modify them to match your requirements.
Installation and migration is effortless.
It absolutely is suitable. There's several advantages:
Prototype can be developed in a number of days
Great for SEO since it's also a blogging platform. You won't have to code SEO friendly CMS by hand.
Possible to have a website front end that can compliment the webapp front end
JSON API is already done for you.
Lots of people are proficient with wordpress so it's not difficult to find staff further down the track
It can use a responsive design straight out the box
The JSON API can work with HTML5 mobile app API's like cordova and jquerymobile and onsen.

I would like to convert Joomla CMS to ASP.net as there is no CMS like Joomla in .net. Would that be a good idea?

I have this idea boggling my head since a long time.
As a developer, I get a lot from the community and feel like giving back something to the community.
And after knowing and working on Joomla i found Joomla CMS as the most flexible, easy and user friendly cms.
As a developer, I like most of the features of it.
Now, i want to have a asp.net version of joomla, available free to the community.
I wanted to start it from scratch and it would be a copy/same as joomla.
Would that be a good idea to go with it?
Are there any CMS (same as Joomla) available in asp.net?
I would like to have suggestions and advice from my community developers.
Critics are welcomed ;)
SIA
Checkout CMSWire. They have the language platform for most of the CMS packages along with a bunch of other attributes.
I think every web developer writes a CMS at some point in their career. I'm working on one right now. But a project the size of Joomla or Dotnetnuke is way too big for one person, even fulltime.
Btw, my favorite CMS ( based of demos ) that I've seen so for is Umbraco.
I've had the same idea as well but like people say it is a huge task.
However it's not as big as creating a CMS in a language like PHP from scratch becuase you can use features like rich data controls, Membership, profiles, themes, masterpages, webparts etc.
For that reason I would not een bother trying to convert joomla's php to c# but rather create a feature list and write code from that.
The only CMS that I've found comes close to joomla is Kentico mainly because of the use of webparts.
You might look at DOTNETNUKE (http://www.dotnetnuke.com/).
That is the only major .NET based CMS that I know of. I also use Joomla and have used DOTNETNUKE as well and they offer many of the same features. If .NET is the way you need to go, this is really the only .NET CMS Open Source player out there.

Framework /starting point for social networking site in .NET?

I did do some googling and searching on this site but did not find exactly what I was looking for.
I'm hoping that someone can point me in the right direction here. I'm an ASP.NET/SQL Server developer and would like to develop a (intially) basic social networking site (gasp). Before I start from scratch with a blank solution in ASP.NET, I'm wondering if there are any frameworks out there ASP.NET specific that would serve as a good starting point. I'm already thinking of using the Google Maps jquery control for my Google Maps integration, as well as the 'sharethis' control for my social networking website sharing integration. Captcha for human authentication... But other than that I'm not sure what I can leverage... Nothing on Google jumped out at me on my search terms.
I'm also wondering if anyone else has done something similar and could share their post mortem/war stories with me.
I'm also open to learning a new platform/language if it would mean saving time - my experience is mostly in ASP.NET, so that is what I plan on using if it makes the most sense. My initial requirements are basic and realistic - profile setup (images, information, etc.), 'group' creation, Google Map integration, calendar controls shared by groups, SMS support, discussion forums among groups, searching for groups, OpenID integration most likely, etc. I am not going to try to build the entire site and then release it, but take baby steps and release pieces of functionality at a time.
Any advice is greatly appreciated for a broad question such as this. Thanks again.
I've found DotNetOpenAuth which seems to be a nice API for handling OpenID for ASP.NET web forms. They also have an ASP.NET MVC version
I also found MS Web Platform. This looks like some good stuff. Anyone ever use it and think it would do well for this sort of app?
I found a library for DotNetNuke called ActiveSocial. It's priced right ($500) and has more than the features I need but lacks some. I wonder if anyone here has ever used AS before. Is DNN easy to extend so I can add Google Maps functionality and such? It doesn't say anywhere on snowcovered (the vendor that sells AS) if AS comes with the source. If it didn't, then I might be screwed because I wouldn't be able to integrate the functionality I want.
I went through this exercise about 15 months ago when I built a SNS for a client. Hoping to find some basic framework for Friends, Chat, Profiles etc I was pretty disappointed.
That said, in retrospect I wish rather than building one that we would have purchased a solution like Community Server. As with most projects I looked at the problem scope with beer, no strike that, ambitious goggles on and the level of work to cover all the edge cases was more than I imagined.
Tread careful my friend, tread careful.
I think this is what you're looking for. Kigg is an open source ASP.NET MVC app that would be a good starting point for what you want. Here is the url: http://www.codeplex.com/Kigg
You can also find a site that is using this here: http://dotnetshoutout.com/
At the very least you will learn the ASP.NET MVC framework which is fantastic.
While not exactly intended to be used for social networking sites, both of these frameworks can help you so you don't have to start from scratch:
DotNetNuke: http://www.dotnetnuke.com/
Umbraco: http://umbraco.org/
Also, for an out of the box solution (no code involved) you could always try this: http://www.ning.com/
Good luck!

How to utilize my learning power in ASP.NET studies?

I've recently tried to switch to ASP.NET. Did I write switch? I meant to learn it, however I am not really sure how to proceed. I've opened several videos - and really watched them with enthusiasm however they seem to be very general. It's not like there are tons of sources on learning PHP.
Do you know some great learning procedure including the websites and sources to learn from so I can learn it ASAP?
I got one project waiting here -> the website is kinda simple Online flash games. The graphics and HTML's finished but I want to try to do it in ASP.NET with MS SQL. I'm already experienced in C# thus I won't need a lot of insight into that, although I'm absolutely unaware of how to do the website, cute urls, what the basic principles in coding are etc..etc.. :)
Since you have a PHP background, I'd recommend that you try out ASP.NET MVC - if you are familiar with the MVC design pattern, it should be a rather painless 'switch'. The "Learn ASP.NET MVC" section is very nice. There's also an RSS feed (on the site above) that contains many great blog posts regarding the technology; furthermore, there's the NerdDinner sample website with a complete tutorial. If you follow the last one, you should be ready with the site in no time :)
I have found these Microsoft videos to be very useful as study material. Videos

Resources