Advice needed: build my site in wordpress or build externally?

  • trooper79

    (@trooper79)


    15 years, 2 months ago

    It’s my first time here. It seems like there really is a vibrant community happening.

    My situation: I’m building my first website (using wordpress as a cms), and I’ll be putting up my wife’s songs and music videos.

    I’d like help with making a decision:
    1. Go build the main content of my site using Go Live (or dreamweaver) and dump the resultant html into the Edit Pages html section

    OR

    2. Dump text, songs, video and images into my “uploads” folder, and use wp-admin to make a composition. I would try to do something with the css style sheets.

    I don’t code. I have experience in putting text and images together for print media in Adobe In Design and MS Publisher. No idea how much “composition power” wordpress has (for someone who doesn’t code) but it seems the Edit Pages function is a like MS Word, except with a lot less control of how images and text sit together.

    Your advice appreciated…

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
  • poejea

    (@poejea)

    15 years, 2 months ago

    Find a good “Theme” to base your site on.. One that fits what you want to do. Then you’re all set! There’s many themes that do different things. The best ones aren’t on wordpress.org.. you’ll have to search with google or something. There’s themes ranging from phtogallery blogs, to online stores, to video sites… A good place to start (but not completely free) is themeforest.net. Then click on “wordpress”.

    If you can’t afford one (they’re all less than or equal to $40) just google around! If you want to make your own custom layout, then you’ll have to learn code.

    Thread Starter trooper79

    (@trooper79)

    15 years, 2 months ago

    Thx PoeJea, I already have a theme.
    I’m Really looking for a way to compose my various elements into a coherent website. Sort of like I’m used to doing in Adobe InDesign and MS publisher for print media. I guess I had the impression I would be able to do that ’cause I’ve been reading a lot of “build your site with wordpress stuff”.

    I can’t see anywhere in wordpress’ Edit Pages I can create text frames and put them where ever I want. Let alone, pictures, songs and videos. Maybe I’m missing something, but wordpress doesn’t seem to have any WYSIWYG editing capabilities.

    I want to drag to create frames of anysize and in any location (overlapping frames if need be) on my webpage. I want these frames to hold my text, pics, songs and videos. And I want any of the content inside a frame to link to other pages.

    Am I talking about “page templates”? Or should I be looking somewhere else.

    grnskl

    (@grnskl)

    14 years, 5 months ago

    Hey, Trooper79. Using Indesign is just what I was thinking of doing. I just downloaded Indesign and it looks like you could do a lot of things akin to print layout, with which I am familiar. WordPress, on the other hand, is limited in what you can do with the layout, and everything is real complicated if you don’t follow the format predetermined. So.
    Haven’t gone into it, but it looks like you could just load a page into WordPress after building it in Indesign. Have you gotten any further with your idea..

    grnskl

    Nile Flores

    (@blondishnet)

    14 years, 5 months ago

    You do not have to find a good theme based on your site.

    If you build a site you want, you simple have to integrate WordPress attributes into your site (I would really suggest looking into http://codex.wordpress.org)

    My suggestion is to stay away from frames and use division layers. Frames are not exactly smiled upon by search engines, and your slower internet users (like dial-up) might not be appreciative if there is a load time lag.

    Implementing your elements is not really to hard. It you are aware of general HTML and header tags, as well as basic, you would be able to figure this out.

    Compare in the Codex to what you have. I AM hoping you build your site at least to XHTML 1.0 Standard. Although you CAN build a site on less, these days, I would not recommend it, especially for web accessibility.

    (you can use http://validator.w3.org) if you want to remain W3 compliant)

    You WILL have to understand a bit of PHP when you are working with your layout, even in a WYSIG editor like First Page, DreamWeaver, CoffeeCup, FrontPage, and others…

    ————-

    I think you might have failed to understand more about WordPress.

    When you post your content, pics, videos and more, it is like writing an email with your rich text editor. You can add HTML code. For example, you can embed YouTube, or write your content pages and post images at merely a click of the mouse.

    grnskl

    (@grnskl)

    14 years, 2 months ago

    Trooper 79:

    Been using In Design to make my posts in WordPress. I export as a jpeg
    to a designated folder, pick it up in Photoshop and resize to a 72 pixel format, then send it to Save for Web and Devices, put it back in the folder and pick it up with WordPress.

    Just FYI

    Regards,

    Tonyg

Viewing 5 replies - 1 through 5 (of 5 total)
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