Does anyone still writes websites from scratch? [closed] - wordpress

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Closed 9 years ago.
I'm diving into web design and development. I wrote a couple of website (just client code) from scratch, starting with just a touch index.html. Is this practice still used or most of the web is made out of templates, Wordpress or some other expedient?

I think 3 things are enough to create good websites (showcase websites or small web app):
Server-side = Understanding a CMS , its structure, and its core functions + Having
basic server language notions. In the case of this OP (Wordpress-PHP combination is good).
Client-side : CSS3 + HTML5 + Javascript (Jquery or equivalent).
AJAX as a 'bridge' between the two sides.
Doing things from scratch without using a CMS is good for knowledge but requires more time.

I think there are 2 questions here:
1) Is this practice still used?
Yes, you just used it. Browsers will support it, so someone out there will be doing it.
2) Is most of the web made out of templates, Wordpress, etc...
Yes, I would think so.
You could go the other direction and bypass a web server and create a program that responds directly to HTTP requests on port 80, but using a webserver saves you the trouble of programming and allows you to work with files. Using something other than touch index.html is just another step beyond that, using a more expedient way to get to the html files you need.
It's not saying that all websites must be dynamic - for example, my own blog is written with middleman, which is very like writing a Rails app except that you compile the app into static HTML files. It's just so much easier to write in something like Markdown that gets generated to a nice page instead of having to edit the HTML by hand.

One rule : if you are building a quite complex website, you will spend plenty of time to do something (or many things) you could have done themn in seconds.
Writing websites from scratch is a student task/homework.

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sharepoint vs wordpress? [closed]

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Closed 9 years ago.
I need to develop a small Real Estate Agent website for my friend where i can put across my content across tabs like
New poperty, Any Queries,Contact Us, About Us etc. AFAIK , i have two options to quickly develop it i.e wordpress or sharepoint.
i have gone thru some stuff over net to help me to decide among two. Now i am inclined towards wordpress. Reasons are:-
1)Share Point is good for application which are rich in business logic
like one with with named users, permissions, groups, file
structures, and document sharing.Good for applications which needs to
scalable.
Probably we can do every stuff on wordpress also, but we need to
depend on third party libraries apart from word press. But sharepoint
probably provides many utilities/features in single bundle.
2)I am java guy and laymen to dot net, so it would better to work on
wordpress(PHP based) than on sharePoint.
My assumption is that share point comes under freeware(share point fondation) and paid version also. But not what extra paid version
provides over freeware? I referred to link http://wordpress.org/support/topic/wordpress-vs-sharepoint to come at my understanding
One of main differences about the sharepoint foundation and the paid version, is that the foundation don't include the publishing features on this link http://www.sharepointchick.com/archive/2011/06/23/sharepoint-publishing-features-functionality.aspx you can read more about them and then decide if they will be useful for you or not.
If you will create a site where you need to manage a lot of data and store tables and things like that I definitely recommend you the SharePoint.
If you will create a site just to show some information the wordpress is what you should choose.
Do you have considered Office 365, it includes all the features of the paid SharePoint server version, and also includes the public facing websites that are very easy and cheap to brand with tools like www.bindtuning.com
I'm a Sharepoint developer but i think using WordPress for this application can be the better solution.
There are lot of third party templates for Real Estates application based on WordPress.
With few dollars you can get a good starting point and thanks to your php knowledge you can customize it if necessary.
If you want to obtain the same result with Sharepoint, i think you have to write a lot of code.

Is it common to use Drupal's CMS but not its framework? [closed]

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Closed 10 years ago.
I have created my own site. It comprises a MySQL database, some jQuery and a bunch of PHP files. I decided that I needed a CMS because others will be creating content for the site. I thought about making my own, but it seemed a big task when I considered how to code publication workflows, user roles etc. So I looked for a really light-weight CMS, but everything I looked at wanted me to create page templates, which I don't want to do.
So in the end, I installed Drupal, but rather than re-create my site in Drupal I just created two content types for the two pages that hold created content (articles and blogs). Then I simply re-wrote my SQL queries to grab results from the Drupal MySQL tables rather than the MySQL tables that I created originally. It works fine.
I like this approach because I'm not constrained by the Drupal framework, and I don't have to worry about making my own CMS.
My question: is this a commonly used approach? I don't know what other developers do? Thanks.
"is this a commonly used approach?"
No, it is not. You have violated the incapsulation principle.
You can use your own code with Drupal database. But it's better to use the framework as it provides a lot of useful functions: forms creation and validation, DB queries construction etc.
It was well tested and your code may contain bugs.
If you upgrade Drupal and it changes anything in the database structure - your code may break. If you used standard functions, the modifications will probably be hidden inside them.
Be careful now - you are responsible for the database integrity!
Your approach will probably work, and if you had said that you have a complex existing site and you are very limited in time - I would say your approach is fine.
But it seems to me like it is not the case. Given your circumstances, I highly recommend integrating your existing code into Drupal. There are really 2 main reasons why you should do it:
Now you only need the article editing feature. But I'm pretty sure somewhere down the road you will find at least one other feature of Drupal that will save you tons of work.
Integrating your existing code with drupal is really not as hard as you may think...

Squiz Matrix vs Other CMS [closed]

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Closed 11 years ago.
According to:
http://intendance.com/2011/03/31/enterprise-content-management-open-source-squiz-matrix/
They have stated:
Most other open source content
management systems options such as,
Drupal, Typo3, Mambo, Joomla rely on
their developers community for
extensions/addons maintenance and
upgrades with no guarantee that they
would continue to do so. While having
large community is great, the
enterprise approach provides a
framework you can extend to your own
uses. Most users of Squiz Matrix want
this flexibility. They not only want
to roll out websites that feels like
they came pre-implemented in their
CMS, but also editing interfaces and
processes that match their internal
work processes. And all this needs to
be done without writing server-side
codes. This one area is where Squiz
Matrix Excels compared to other
traditional open source CMS.
What does this mean and is it true?
Here's essentially what I believe that paragraph means, if I translate (after reviewing their product)...
... starting with the last half of their paragraph first (because it'll make more sense that way)...
People who manage a CMS (web site) want to be able to drag and drop cool plugins and add-ons to their site without having to learn how to code. We can do that. But you want your plugins to "feel" like they're actually part of your site (and not a tacked on after-thought). Ours do.
We're better than the other guys (like Drupal, Typo3, Mambo, Joomla) because... Yes, they also have all those cool plugins and add-ons that'll work for you (without coding)... BUT... Because they're "open source" and not "enterprise" you can't rely on them! Who knows where those open source plugin developers will be in a year or two!
... this one sentence has no translation...
While having large community is great, the enterprise approach provides a framework you can extend to your own uses.
If I were to try, it would sound something like this...
A tip of the hat to open source for providing great support and development! But "enterprise" is better because you can do whatever you want with it to make it better (like you can with Microsoft Word and you can't with OpenOffice).
Since you asked "is it true" I think that's a matter of opinion. I would say, "no", if you choose a good open source CMS with a vibrant community. I would say "yes" if you choose a sub-par tool with absolutely no community following (like this one)...
I will note also that it's a little difficult to gauge exactly how robust their plugin collection might be when you're left with this kind of jargon to figure it out: https://www.squiz.net/resources/integration-datasheet
Again, masterful writing!

OK, so JQuery is cool and all but is it really wise to use it in your project? [closed]

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Closed 12 years ago.
I am new to web development, learning ASP.NET. I used some JQuery script so am just wondering if it causes some performance issues or anything like that. Is it OK and rather safe to use it?
I work as a Developer Evangelist for Microsoft, and as the others have said jQuery is not only stable and safe... it's also awesome.
If it wasn't, we wouldn't have baked it into the .NET project templates.
In terms of performance there are things that you as a developer can do wrong, but if you follow best practices jQuery will improve your visitor’s experience, not detract from it.
If you are learning jQuery then make sure you visit jQuery.com to look at their getting started section. Also I found the following links useful:
Get Started With JQuery
Improve your jQuery - 25 excellent tips
As well as the Google CDN, Microsoft also provides one:
http://ajax.microsoft.com/ajax/jquery/jquery-1.4.2.min.js
Ajax CDN Announcement
Microsoft Ajax CDN Documentation
I feel like I am being baited...
jQuery is an amazing library. The fact that it aligns how CSS and JavaScript are selected and processed is amazing. The fact that it hides so much of the browser-to-browser inconsistency that makes JavaScript such a pain is huge. The fact that it makes so many amazing things simple is...well...pretty valuable.
If you cache properly and call it from a CDN* there is really very little performance issue. In fact, I would say that my sites are a good deal faster because of jQuery since the jQuery code I am calling is much better than I would do myself.
Also, I try for Unobtrusive JavaScript wherever possible so the site still at least works even if the JQuery magic is unavailable.
A CDN is a Content Delivery Network. This is the way I recommend you link to jQuery in your pages.
jQuery is available from the Google CDN here:
https://ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.4.2/jquery.min.js
If you leave off the minor version number, Google provides the latest version.
It's safe to use and saves you a lot of time since it gives you the same api for all browsers.
It's safer to use it. Different browsers do things differently, jQuery provides a wonderful abstraction layer. You can essentially trust jQuery to do the required plumbing to work on each supported browser, rather than you having to take care of it yourself.
There technically would be a slight overhead since you're hopping through a method to get to the end result, but it's so tiny I would not worry about it.

Tips needed for a skills-presentation website [closed]

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Closed 11 years ago.
I want to create a dummy presentation website that would show my .NET webprogramming skills; I could put a link to this dummy website on my blog and show it at interviews.
If you would need to create a presentation website that shows your web programming skills, what functionality would that website contain? Or if you were a hiring person, what would you like to see in such a website?
I need a few examples of web applications that I could implement in there. Someone told me already I could make a digg it system so for now I'm looking into that.
Anything in frontend, backend, any tip could help me.
Andrei,
It's aweful hard to look at a .net site and see programming skill behind it. A beautiful looking site can have a real mess of spaghetti code driving it, and a brilliantly engineered site with bad graphic design can look like it was made in the 1990s.
That said, I think your best opportunity is do do something with the MVC framework. Clever use of routing is a benefit clear to all, and mastery of jQuery (not really .net, I know...) would impress a potential boss/customer.
Of course, proper unit testing and good architecture is, in the short term, invisible. It's like a good foundation on a house. Nobody notices a good foundation, but everybody knows when a bad foundation breaks and your house collapses!
John
Have a look at this question. Hopefully it will enlighten you.
What contents should a professional programmer’s website have?
Whatever you decide on Andrei, make sure it's not trivial and also let the interviewing folks know before you come into the interview. You don't want to be scrambling for an internet connection etc. In fact, if you bring in your own laptop with all the tiers running on it, all the better.
Know your basics... .NET programming is good and all, but make sure your skills at integrating XHTML, CSS, XML, and ECMA show through. A lot of builders hide a horrendous site with flash/silverlight... If I were to ever look at someone, they would have to be able to create functionality and re-usability throughout the site without accessing the server for everything (Aside from AJAX). Really, from those 4 items, you can make nearly any site. After you have those down, create a link to a page showing off the flashy skills. They aren't always as important.
Thank you all so much for taking the time to provide a little feedback. Your advices are extremely valuable for me.
I already have a blog (http://www.andreicristof.com/Blog/), so this presentation website is not a 2nd blog; I intend to show that I have .net skills through various .net applications, so its a website where people can login and see the backend and all that, but also I shall be focusing on making a nice clean frontend that validates, and is not flashy (I don't like flashy, I'm a fan of clean websites).
Again, thank you and if anyone has other tips as well, please let me know.
Regards,

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