What is HTML5 Boilerplate? - html5boilerplate

I do not understand how people use HTML5Boilerplate with dynamic sites, like news sites, blogs, etc. I understand that you can get themes for WordPress, but specifically, I'm curious to know how sites like UpWorthy.com and DailyDot.com update when they are not using Wordpress or other identifiable CMS systems.
Can anyone explain?
Thank you!

Before there was Wordpress or a CMS, every website was custom made. All that was needed was a database and a backend language - which back in the day were JSP, ASP, and PHP. There were no pretty permalinks, so every URL ended in a query string with many parameters.
Those sites updated whenever their inhouse/outsourced IT team was ready to roll out an update. They were not a customized 'theme' but a 100% custom built.
They used boilerplate as a starting point of their templates and made modifications by making changes to those templates with whatever IDE company policy permits.
So the boiler plate is a starting point to create a completely custom website that ensures that as little as possible is missed by the developer.

Related

Migrating from Joomla to Wordpress advice

This is my first time migrating a website from Joomla to Wordpress. The website: www.sfspas.com
1- I am worried that the website will not transfer well or that I will loose functionalities.
Can I duplicate the code and just transfer that version to Wordpress? (Keeping the website live via Joomla and creating in parallel a new website www.sfpsas222.com in wordpress to test things out?)
The website has to be live 24h/7 and It can't just break. How can I make sure the inventory will be uploaded correctly and the website will look as it looks now?
2- Once transferred. If I want to change the appearance of the index.php can I simply upload a newly designed index page on Wordpress? How can I go about it? Any suggestions will be highly appreciated!
Thanks!
I recently transferred one of my sites from Joomla to Wordpress and I can say, that it's not just one-click action. Both frameworks have their own structure, you can't transfer content and users directly.
In short, for transfer you need to create a simple plugin which will take all require info from Joomla (articles, users, etc.) and inject it into Wordpress database, converting prior to that, if necessary.
And no, you CAN NOT do this on 24/7 running site. Don't even think about it. Duplicate your site, convert its database to WordPress, check, that everything works properly, and only then put it online.
It's not an easy process and it requires some knowledge. Even if some kind of Joomla-Wordpress converter exists, you'll have a lot of things messed 100% guaranteed. I've made a lot of transfers in my life, so I'm pretty sure of it.
Providing you have a required knowledge of database management and PHP, just be patient and spend some time. If you don't - hire a professional. There's no easy way here, because Joomla and WordPress are like car and bike. Both are a transport, both run fast, but you can't convert one into another without any effort.

Using wordpress as external content management system

We are planning to create an asp.net website (probably mvc), that needs a cms for news items.
Our content managers and others who require to publish news have asked if they can use wordpress for content management.
Our users have different roles, and news items should be visible to certain roles, or even specific users if possible.
The reason they want wordpress is the manager's user friendliness, so if some other alternative with the same kind of user experience would be ok.
Could anyone please point me in some direction?
NOTE: I'm still doing research at the moment, so I've got nothing holding me back at this point.
There is an API plugin that has been developed to spit out information in JSON, but I have not actually implemented a site with it:
http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/json-api/
Perhaps you could have the authors work on a wordpress install and create your app to draw content via that plugin?
I too was facing the same issue, little different. We want to have WP as CMS so that our site can take the benefit of SEO which is very easy with WP. SO we installed WP under a folder in the Main ASP.net based website. Initially there were issues, I was unable to run it. Finally managed to run it. Solution is posted here - http://www.wwwlabz.com/how-to-run-a-php-based-website-from-a-subfolder-in-asp-net-website. Hope it will help someone. Actual site where we implemented this is http://www.periproperties.com/content/.
Now I want to have specific section of WP to be accessible on my site. SO I am exploring different options and will post, if found something
Thanks.
DotNetNuke is the most popular ASP.NET based CMS (source). I am implementing my first project in it and so far I am very happy with it.
Note the free edition will not work for you since you need customizable security roles and free has a limited set of predetermined roles. You'll need the pro edition.
I don't know how similar it is to WordPress. Overall, WordPress is much more popular but of course there are platform issues with WordPress since it is Apache based and you want to create an ASP.NET website.

codeigniter with wordpress

I am planning a new website with codeigniter using wordpress.
this site will contain creating online albums, selling presents and gifts, and another one for selling cameras and their accessories.
is it recommended using this combination?
what are the advantages and disadvantage of this?
is there a better solution for building with framework and cms?
Personally (Having experience of both) It all depends on what your objectives are. Are you wanting to quickly and easily pull the project together, or do you have unlimited time and want everything to be feature rich and customized to your exact specification? CodeIgniter will allow you to build each aspect exactly as you want, where as WordPress (through the use of plugins) will allow you to get the end result you want without quiet as much customization.
However, that being said there is nothing saying you can't use CodeIgniter and direct traffic to the WordPress part for certain aspects, all down to your personal preference.
Why did you decided to use a working cms and a php framework together? Just using one of both is enough. The advantage you will have with wordpress is the fact that there are many plugins that are easily to use. For Codeigniter you will have to do all of the codings for yourself but you can build your website like you want it to be!

Which CMS should I use when I hand a website over to my non-techie friend?

I'm designing a simple website for a friend - four static pages to advertise a yoga retreat she is running. I have a couple of requirements:
My time is short; I want to quickly build a theme template.
She has no technical skills; she wants to log in to the backend and update page content.
Working for myself, a static site builder such as nanoc or jekyll would be ideal: I can build a template.html with room for some content, then update content files, rebuild the site and redeploy. As a bonus, the whole site could be hosted free on GitHub pages. This satisfies requirement (1) but not requirement (2).
I've also considered Wordpress, because I've got plenty of experience running WP sites and developing custom themes. This satisfies requirement (2) but not (1). There is simply too much development overhead building a WP theme - it is not straightforward to modify the markup structure of all those template files, and there are plenty of snags involving ugly page titles or "Comments are disabled" strings which need to be removed.
It shouldn't be this difficult. I want a site engine which has a simple template.html file for easy re-theming, and an accessible backend for content changes. Bonus points if free hosting is available somewhere.
Perch - http://www.grabaperch.com - is made for this sort of thing, though it's not free (£).
Could you hack a site together using tumblr pages?
What about Google Sites? Dead simple.
If you're open to .NET i think you should look at n2cms.
WordPress using a premium theme bought in any of the many sites offering quite nice themes for a reasonable price (60 USD). Then, you just change the logo and ready to go.
Since I'm not a web designer myself, this is what I´ve done myself for my sites and I´m quite happy with the results

Architecture ideas to allow customers to build their own site, based off external site's data?

I'm not entirely sure how to properly ask this, so please bear with me.
I have an idea for a site I would like to build, which would basically be a site for members to create some data and have it housed in my database. I would like to offer a value-add to the site which would allow people to spin off their own website via my own "website builder" tool (probably some sort of CMS). Their website would be able to communicate with my master database to display their data.
Getting down to the crux of the topic, I'm looking for architectural advice/ideas/etc. regarding what services I could use to do this. I'm not looking a 100% automated solution, but something along these lines (which may not be completely correct, I admit):
Customer puts in an order to create their own site, using my tools.
I setup a separate domain for them, roll out the CMS foundation to the site, and the customer has full editing control of the CMS to design it however they would like.
The CMS would have some customizations so that it includes functionality to call APIs located on the master site, which would return the relevant data.
In the research I have done on SO, I've seen a lot of mentions of Umbraco which honestly looks like a good start. I'm just worried that when I go to upgrade a version, I have to deal with overwriting my custom API functionality. I'm guessing this is the nature of the beast, and requires me to accept/plan for it.
Does anyone have any thoughts about this? Some high-level starting points? Thanks!
I've been thinking about this same issue for my customers.
It is not hard to automatically roll out a stock cms such as Wordpress or Joomla. This sort of thing is done all the time by "1 click installers" that DreamHost and others have.
Including custom widgets or plugins for the CMS that can connect to your main app is also not hard.
For dns, you can use Amazon Route 53 or other DNS services that include a good api at the dns management level.
I suggest that you focus on using a CMS that is very popular (eg Wordpress or Joomla) rather than something less well known such as Umbraco. Using a more popular system will drastically reduce your training costs--remember that if you supply the CMS to your customers, then they'll also expect you to supply the support for it...

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