How powerful is Drupal really? [closed] - drupal

As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, visit the help center for guidance.
Closed 10 years ago.
I've been using Drupal for a long time, and know that it's robust and has tons of features. My question is, is it a framework that you can build REALLY big sites on? And can anyone give some examples of REALLY big sites that have been built with Drupal?
To answer my question about whether or not it's a good idea to build really big sites on Drupal, imagine having to redo facebook as a drupal site. Would it be possible (realistically)?

The Onion and WhiteHouse.gov are Drupal-powered, and I'd say they're fairly huge sites. The founder of the Drupal project keeps a list of some prominent Drupal-powered sites.

imagine having to redo facebook as a drupal site. Would it be possible (realistically)?
Yes but I wouldn't. You should probably define "Big." Do you mean big as in tons of pages or DB storage? Do you mean big as in amount of visitors? Do you mean big as in famous? Drupal is a fine CMS and if scaled properly I'm sure you can handle a large load of visitors. But the main point here is that it is a CMS (with extensibility) and not a good framework for making something completely custom. If you need something truly unique then you should use a real framework like CakePHP or CodeIgnitor, etc.

I went to a conference in London a few months back on the subject. A major UK based charity Comic Relief which has a big TV appeal every 2 years and hit £80million ($100 million) in donations this year. It is run off Drupal, and has a very unique scalability problem in that it only really ets traffic and takes donations on 1 day of the year.
So by using many different database techniques and servers such as reverse proxies it was able to stay working through out the donation day.
It is very possible to make BIG sites on Drupal.

I've been working with drupal for some time now and it's nice, but have in mind that it does a lot for file scanning/including - 80% time spent on bootstrapping I think I heard some where. But in terms of handling lots of traffic it's performing fine.

i've worked on a very big drupal site and there are serious performance problems, even with two db servers and memcache. the site holds up fine, its just not efficient. most likely its the way we've written everything, but even some very talented drupal guys are scratching their heads. bootstrapping is an issue indeed, as is using amfphp
for something like facebook you need a framework, not something that requires 15 additional modules to set up just a blog ...

Go read the blog of, and listen to the podcasts from, Lullabot - they've been involved with some pretty large sites based on Drupal.
One large Drupal user I'm aware of (sorry, don't know if it's a Lullabot site or not) is Sony Music - they're using Drupal 6 to roll out sites for their artists. See Sony Music sponsors major multilingual improvements in Drupal 6 for more.
Essentially, I believe that the ability of Drupal to scale up will be more than 99% of websites ever need. For the other <1% of sites, there are ways to make things faster.
It's a problem I'd like to have. :-)

Related

sharepoint vs wordpress? [closed]

As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, visit the help center for guidance.
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.

WordPress vs ExpressionEngine: is EE worth the price? [closed]

As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, visit the help center for guidance.
Closed 10 years ago.
I'm very new to coding (having only taken Web Development 101 at university aka 'OMG CSS u guise'), and I'm just beginning to realize that knowing HTML/CSS alone isn't good enough. I've decided that it would be best for me to learn the hell out of one CMS, because I'm not keen on learning a full programming language. Mainly I just want to be able to create websites that load instantly (think Sproutcore home page) that happen to use some kind of templating system to make things easier to administer over time.
I've looked into WordPress, and I know that it's a super popular platform for a reason, but it seems like most sites running WordPress don't load very quickly. I've read around a bit and it seems like the opinion of a lot of coders out there is that WP is a "heavy" platform. And, besides, I just recently viewed source on wordpress.org and found that they're not even running WordPress there! I mean come on!
I've also looked into ExpressionEngine, and I'm very impressed with the way things are done. It seems like after the learning curve it should be simple to use and highly extensible, but at $300 per commercial site license + the cost of add-ons, I'd like to be a bit more convinced of it's value. I know that AListApart, JasonSantaMaria.com, change.gov, iLounge, and many more high quality, high traffic sites run on ExpressionEngine, but I'm not totally convinced it's worth the price given that WP can surely do the job well enough in 90% of cases.
I would really appreciate your opinion.
Maybe I should just say F all this, and create my static pages with straight HTML/CSS, and then use a blogging platform like Tumblr or WordPress strictly for blog posts, as per Sproutcore?
Would love to hear your opinion.
For developing a commercial website that needs to run "in the real world", $300+/- is a very compelling price. This isn't to do with Expression Engine specifically, but any good commercial CMS. Nearly anything can do the job - including WordPress - it's just a matter of how easily and quickly it lets you do your job. Nothing is free - it's just a matter of whether you - or your users - pay for it in time, or in dollars (or Euros. Or Crowns... whatever). Amortize $300 over the life of the product - from the first big setup to every time you need to make a tweak - and think about how much effort EllisLab developers have spent themselves, and thus saved you. Then think about how little they're actually charging for that value.
Or, if WP happens to align perfectly with your needs, just use that.
But I strongly support commercial software products (partly because I work with them and make them) and IMO 4 times out of 5, the ROI is better than a free alternative.
EE is perhaps worth the price if it is the solution that meets all of your requirements. You need to use the right tool for the job. It will not do you well to learn just one CMS and then try to shape all your problems to fit that solution. I suggest you learn the features and downsides of several CMSs and apply whichever one is the best for the particular site you are working on. Or even use a combination. Limiting yourself to learning just one CMS as if it is the be-all-and-end-all of CMSs will only hurt you, and it might make your customers miserable when they're forced to use a product that wasn't even designed with their needs in mind.
You say that wordpress.org doesn't use WordPress, but I suggest you look more closely. The wordpress.org site is quite complex, therefore it might not make sense to use WP as the main CMS for that site. But did you look at the Blog (aka News) section? That's running on WP. Look at the Showcase section. That's WP too!
My guess is that they use WP where it's appropriate, and perhaps something else where WP isn't appropriate. Which brings me back to my original point: You need to use the right tool for the job.
Edit #1 - Oh, and as for your interest in making fast-loading sites: The CMS has some influence on that because some have more overhead than others, but the CMS is not the only thing that affects a site's performance. Sproutcore loads fast because it's a tiny page, it's got only one small image and a tiny stylesheet. So of course it's going to load fast! You can make a complex site load fast, too, if you use things like caching, small graphics, code/database optimizations, content delivery networks, throw more hardware at it, etc etc etc.
Edit #2 - If you're interested in creating static sites for performance, but you want to have some templating control, take a look at Jekyll. It's a script that combines your templates with plain text files that are formatted using Textile or Markdown, and spits out complete HTML pages. You might also be interested in Movable Type, which is a platform that can generate static HTML. Once again, the right tool for the job... there are so many choices out there.
I used ExpressionEngine professionally for about two years, compared to other "content management systems" out there I think it gets the job done well. In order to make Wordpress or Drupal do the same out of the box features ExpressionEngine has takes a bit of tweaking or php knowledge. ExpressionEngine was a great tool for me while I used it. The templating language and admin aren't too hard to get into with only html and css knowledge. Using third-party addons such as Structure and most from Pixel & Tonic will make your sites easy to develop and most of all easy for clients to manage.
Wordpress is a blogging platform, not a CMS. I find the admin too bare bones and confusing for clients to properly separate and manage their different kinds of structured content. It works great for blogging, but try to make a staff page or anything more structured and it falls apart.
If price is an issue I would recommend looking into Symphony CMS, which follows a similar concept to organization of content as ExpressionEngine. Though you have to learn XSLT, which can be a bigger learning curve than EE's own tag language. But, it's free.
I primarily work with projects now using Django, which is a python framework and will have a bigger learning curve than Wordpress, ExpressionEngine or Symphony. But it gets the job done for small and large projects alike. If you're looking to take the plunge so to speak, might as well go straight for the jugular.
Having dealt with both, between WordPress and ExpressionEngine, EE is not worth it. The community is nowhere near as supportive or vibrant, and there is nothing EE can do (after hours of painstaking configuration, mind you) that WordPress doesn't do better (in my opinion). Add to that the best plugin interface I've ever seen, and WordPress truly is limited only by the imagination and capabilities of the developer. And the technology, I suppose.
WordPress is not always the best tool for the job, but I'd say it is always a better tool than EE.
As most people have already said it depends on the site. But in my opinion for most sites ExpressionEngine is a better choice than WordPress. The $300 for the license gets you support from paid support staff plus the community is really awesome.
Paid software will always, in my opinion, be a cheaper solution than free software as you're getting better quality code, guaranteed support and a commitment from the developers. Try getting support for wordpress and it will run you $15,000 per year or more.
Additionally in order to do anything truly special with WP you need to know wordpress with EE you can build outstanding sites without any php knowledge and you're not forced to work within the confines of what is essentially blogging software. Admittedly it's gotten a little beyond blogging recently buy it nowhere near as flexible as EE.
Sean
To speed up WordPress, you can use caching and minification plugins, like WP Super Cache,
W3 Total Cache, and WP Minify — or even go with a specialized hosting provider like WP Engine.
Caching can speed up WordPress significantly. What it does in some cases, in fact, is actually create static files that are loaded on subsequent page requests.
As for minification, they say that 20% of loading time is server-side, and 80% is front-end code. (Of course, server-side delays are generally worse in than front-end delays, but still...) So when you're thinking of optimizing, front-end is often the first place to think about.
I have made many sites with WordPress and I'm finishing my first EE2 site.
My choice for future sites will mainly be based on the type of content the site needs. If the site needs pages and some sort of "posts" like a blog or simple news feed, WP is a good candidate. If there are other types of content EE2 might be the way to go as you create a new channel for each type of content (pages, posts, events, products, etc). Relating all these types of content to other content with the Playa Add-on has been pretty cool too.
In WP you can create a custom post type and customize the fields to create a suitable home for these other types of content, but by default it's meant for blogs. So I wouldn't say that WP can't be a CMS, I would say it's a blogging engine that can be a CMS with some work.
Two problems with EE instead WP. First, you can find many out-of-the-box solutions for WordPress from themes to plugins that can let a site with simple needs be created quickly. If I have a project that needs to go up quickly, find a premium theme that fits good enough, do some slight modifications and I'm done. The second thing is that for the average person WordPress will be easier to use in creating and maintaining content, especially if the content is posts and/or pages.
And use WP Super Cache to speed up WordPress!

What are the most common pitfalls for a beginner Drupal user? [closed]

As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, visit the help center for guidance.
Closed 9 years ago.
I'm just starting to learn Drupal, and I am really liking it.
What are the most common pitfalls for a beginner? How can they be avoided?
First of all you should be clear with yourself on what you are trying to learn:
Theming?
Site building?
Developing new modules/functionality?
Of course the boundaries of each of those areas are not sharp, but the patterns that you will follow to learn about drupal will be quite different. Here's my opinion:
General pitfall (applies to all areas)
The single most recurrent mistake beginners do is to be in a hurry. In a world of books with titles like "learn to master C++ in 24 hours or less" people approaches drupal believing that they can get away with a couple of days of playing around with somebody's else code. If they do not understand at first sight how things work in Drupal they switch to rant mode and begin to post on blogs and forums on how much drupal is stupidly complicated.
So: be prepared to invest time and energy to embrace the high level of complexity (which is something different than complication) of Drupal. Be prepared to actually study how things work rather than skim over help requests on forums and mailing lists. If you are still not convinced. Here it comes some good reading.
If you are learning about theming
Pitfall: learning by trying to hack a previously existing theme.
A better way: first off, give at least a good in-depth look at the Drupal theming guide. It's dry and it's boring but it gives you a good overview of the flow of the theming engine. Then download and install the zen theme and start you theme by using the starter kit that is included. I recommend - if you use Drupal 6 - to use the version 2 of the theme, although in beta, as it has a much more logical organisation of its internal files, at least IMO.
If you are learning about building sites
Pitfall: getting overwhelmed by the amount of available modules and missing out on the big ones.
A better way: read some of the case studies that have been presented over the years on drupal.org. You will get a pretty nice idea of what are common patterns in implementing functionality by means of contributed modules. Explore and understand the core components of drupal well. They are the basis for everything else, so you will definitively need to know how the mechanism of nodes and revision works, what is the functioning of the taxonomy, how the permission/roles system work, what are the differences between nodes and blocks etc... Do not miss out on CCK and Views, which - although they are (until now) contributed modules, are a component of 99% of the drupal sites "out there".
If you are learning about writing your own modules
Pitfall: trying to put together a functionality by mean of assembling PHP and jQuery snippets of code retrieved here and there on the web.
A better way of doing: if you want to be good at drupal you can't afford to go by the just in time learning paradigma, you have to go for the old-school just in case one. You really need to have a general overall understanding of all the components of the system (amongst others: form API, menu system, hook logic, js in Drupal, node processing, theming engine, localisation, caching...). Drupal is somehow a framework, and if you do not know well the ecosystem in which you are planting your code, chances are you will spent lot of time in producing an horrible code that will soon or later fail in doing what it is supposed to. Above all you will take a lot of time to code something that possibly would have taken a fraction of the time to be realised "the drupal way".
My opinion about possible tools for learning to code well in drupal
http://drupal.org - Is packed with useful information, but it is so messy and the ratio signal/noise is so low that I would discourage to use the site as your main source of information.
Books - IMO if you are new to Drupal it might be worth to invest on a couple of books. Books provide that logical structure and learning sequence that you can't have by jumping from one site to the other, following a screencast here and a how-to there. My top three: Module development is a book very well written, with a smart progression of topics, it actually guides you to writing a few modules with increasing complexity. It is a good reading to quickly get an idea of how drupal works. Pro Drupal Develpment is the book for Drupal. It is quite dry and - although it has examples of code all along - I like it more as a study-book / reference text. Be sure to get the second edition as the first one deals with Drupal 5, which is going to be obsolete soon. The only noticeable shortcoming of Pro Drupal Development is javascript (introduced in a very hasty way). JS and Drupal is a wide topic, and for that purpose I like Drupal 6 Javascript and jQuery better as the first book I mentioned, this book is also project-based (i.e. You learn things in relation to the needs to implement a project).
Other websites - They are an invaluable source of information and examples. It is the perfect place to search when you have a general understanding on how to realise things, but too little experience in a specific domain to be autonomous (and everybody, no matter how experienced, have some domains in which they are not "pro"). Some good websites have been already mentioned by others. My all-time favourite is lullabot but drupal dojo and learn by the drop are also very good.
Community - This is a huge asset of drupal. The community is very big and very helpful and you are likely to all the time find somebody wishing to help. The IRC channel is a good place to start.
Meetings - Every 6 months the Drupal community meets for a few days (once in North America and once in Europe) to exchange expertise and information. Although travelling to DrupalCon can be (too) expensive for doing it, since a couple of meetings the community got organised to post all the videos of all the sessions held. They are an excellent resource too.
Hope this helps to get you going, and best luck with your learning! :)
For Drupal beginners, and "especially" if, like me, one has a firm grasp of MVC or MVP concepts, I would recommend buying or borrowing "Pro Drupal 7 Development", Third Edition.
As for pitfalls:
Learn the menu (routing) system
Embrace the Form API
While some have embraced Zen, I have personally embraced Omega
As one stated earlier, Views are your friend. Model and create as many "Content Types" as needed, then use Views to display them.
CTools is great, Views is the best sauce on planet Drupal, but tread lightly around the Panels and Page Manager interface. :)
I hope that helps.
Learn to theme using the Zen theme or something like it as a base
Theme fields, not pages
Views are your friend
ImageCache rocks
You could - a lot of people started with the Garland theme that comes with Drupal and got stuck because it has logic in the middle (big no-no in a theme) and renamed its parts confusingly. Zen is documented.
Here's a podcast at Lullabot about it:
http://www.lullabot.com/audiocast/podcast-74-drupal-design-round-table
One common pitfall is not to do enough research on the different modules available for each task or function that you are trying to accomplish. It is very easy to install a module in Drupal and start working with it without fully understanding the nuances of that module. It might seem as though the module is working as expected. However, halfway though your project you might find that that a particular module has a limitation or issue that cannot be overcome without major custom code. Another module might have been just as appropriate for the project but also met your additional requirement. A good example of this is deciding how to setup your user permissions. There are many modules that help enhance Drupal's out of the box permissions system but each one works differently and has a specific feature set. Do you need special login screens for different users, workflow requirements, etc? Also included in this is a proper evaluation of whether you should use a module that does not quite meet your needs or write your own instead. Without fully understanding the limitations of the module as related to your specific requirements you could go down a path where you would spend a lot of time trying to fit the module into your needs instead of just quickly building one from scratch that exactly matches your requirements.

Small projects ideas to teach beginners web development using ASP.Net [closed]

As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, visit the help center for guidance.
Closed 9 years ago.
I asked from few weeks ago this question:
How can I teach a beginner to write ASP.NET web applications quickly?
And i got some good answers but i liked the answer which tell me to make some small projects with them (me with the beginners)
So i decided to collect some small websites ideas to do with them (i do a part then they complete or show them some hard parts and they follow)
But i faced 2 problems hope you help me solve.
1- Couldn't get enough good ideas for ASP.Net websites to make with them.
2- If i want to make them train on using HTML websites created by the web designer to make
it dynamic using ASP.Net, where to find just HTML websites, or there is a better idea to teach them this part?
You may ask, whats exactly the level i hope they reach?
I want them to be Very good in ASP.Net, HTML, and familiar with JavaScript and CSS.
And the most important thing i want them to be a good searchers, means they got a problem and they Google the right way, and solve. "i think this will gain by time", but this is an important part, because i don't want them to say "we can't do this :("
May be i am asking for too many things, but i just hope general help so i can go further with them.
Use your brothers interests. If one brother likes Football, have him put together a fan site for his favorite team. Another brother likes fishing, well, you get the point.
There are two main benefits with picking topics this way:
They are already subject matter experts and can concentrate on learning the technology instead of the subject and the technology.
Hopefully they pick something they are passionate about and this will add to their desire to learn the technologies.
A good way to learn how to work with ASP.NET is to take a web template and start making it into a functional website.
For example, if you download this template you can see that it's a pretty straight forward business style site. Home, Projects, Services, Downloads, About and Contact are the main sections. The template also has a some additional buttons and links. These are all pretty good places to start learning how to create a site.
First thing, create a masterpage from this template. This is where you'll learn how to tear apart someones HTML and where to start placing content Templates and to start thinking about what can be a user control or reused (main menus, footers, sidebars controls etc.)
Next steps would be do go ahead and flesh out the folder structure of the site and dive in making the those default pages for each section. A learner will quickly see how a site is created from a master page and learn the little quirks of images and stylesheets and how to get around those as you dive through folder structures.
Now it's your choice. Pick a section and start having them dive into it. Products would give you a way to use a database, querystrings, forms, etc. How to pull data, how to display it and how to save it. Downloads would be a place where you could learn how to manage content for a user. What little admin tools a site would need to manage it. Services and About can be CMS driven pages. Once again data driven, but still different from the Products section. The contact forms would give them the option of leaning about using Email from inside of a .net application.
Now once you get your learner working on this, they might actually end up with a pretty usable site/product that they could actually sell or reuse in a 'for real' project. Take your time teaching them, go slow on each section and I'm sure you'll get some good input back from your learner.
Hope this helps you.
E-Commerce is a great solution, as other people have suggested. Or a portfolio web site would be even easier. Also, a picture sharing web site might work out well for them (family members could log in and upload, too?)
I would also add you should use the visual (design) mode in visual studio for the best effect. And then show the HTML it generates after the page is run/compiled. That way you cover for the people who are more visual learners and get into the code later. But I'm sure you were already going to do that :)
How about a sample time entry app.
User logs in to key his time for the week.
Admin user can approve time.
Reports can be made for summaries, approval, etc.. to give programmer exposure to reports.
Login / Roles is always important to understand
Time Entry gives you database interaction.
A simple informational website for a business or store. This should include a contact us form. That should be good practice.
A simple e-commerce application is a good project, as it exposes the students to a number of issues:
Security
Database integration
Transactions
Session management
Design and usability
If your interests are in TV shows or movies or something similar that one can collect on DVDs, building a simple CRUD web app to update a database should be a fairly simple application that will cover some basics like DB design and manipulation, AJAX if you want to send the requests without a full postback, and is something rather common in enterprise applications so it may be very useful.
The year the DVD came out, who wrote and directed what is on the discs, genre of the material, length, stars, extras on the DVD and many other things could go into the DB if one wanted to set up a library like system for an add-on that could be interesting in some ways.

Tips needed for a skills-presentation website [closed]

As it currently stands, this question is not a good fit for our Q&A format. We expect answers to be supported by facts, references, or expertise, but this question will likely solicit debate, arguments, polling, or extended discussion. If you feel that this question can be improved and possibly reopened, visit the help center for guidance.
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,

Resources