Web Design Advice

I'm trying to set up a "whats on" listings type portal and not sure the best way to handle the CMS. I can do it manually, using some fairly basic ASP/HTML and to be honest, that would satisfy most of my needs.

That said everything seems to Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla nowadays and part of this excersise to update some skills. I've been fannying around with Wordpress the last few days and while some functionality is excellent, a lot of what I'm wanting it to do is frustrating me. I know shag all php so hacks and workarounds are not going to happen.

The question is should I persevere with Wordpress and keep looking at forums, plug ins etc or just sack it all off and get it done in ASP?

Papa Bendy <(Address removed)> said:

I'm trying to set up a "whats on" listings type portal and not sure the
best way to handle the CMS. I can do it manually, using some fairly
basic ASP/HTML and to be honest, that would satisfy most of my needs.
That said everything seems to Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla nowadays and
part of this excersise to update some skills. I've been fannying around
with Wordpress the last few days and while some functionality is
excellent, a lot of what I'm wanting it to do is frustrating me. I know
shag all php so hacks and workarounds are not going to happen.
The question is should I persevere with Wordpress and keep looking at
forums, plug ins etc or just sack it all off and get it done in ASP?

I use a PHP / MySQL CMS called Modx – http://modxcms.com – there are loads of functions already written in PHP and an active support forum. But I guess to get something bespoke you are going to have to get your hands dirty with PHP at some point.

Coding is blx.

Basically whatever it is you're doing, you need to be comfortable with your tools. But then again it's best if your tools are popular cos then you get shortcuts from other people. In my case, other people always better than me at coding. (An old MD used to like using the expression "some people can use their penis to polevault, whereas you're just going through puberty...")

My guess would be if you know a smattering of ASP then PHP is hardly going to be rocket science for you. If you can get WordPress to spit out fragments of your pages in the right places, then you can pull the fragments together into pages using includes in PHP an' ting.

But old dogs, new tricks innit.
Alternatively, get someone else to do it!

DJ

Papa Bendy <(Address removed)> said:

I'm trying to set up a "whats on" listings type portal and not sure the
best way to handle the CMS. I can do it manually, using some fairly
basic ASP/HTML and to be honest, that would satisfy most of my needs.
That said everything seems to Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla nowadays and
part of this excersise to update some skills. I've been fannying around
with Wordpress the last few days and while some functionality is
excellent, a lot of what I'm wanting it to do is frustrating me. I know
shag all php so hacks and workarounds are not going to happen.
The question is should I persevere with Wordpress and keep looking at
forums, plug ins etc or just sack it all off and get it done in ASP?

I'd go with Wordpress and More Fields plugin http://labs.dagensskiva.com/plugins/more-fields/

J J <(Address removed)> said:

Papa Bendy <(Address removed)> said:
I'm trying to set up a "whats on" listings type portal and not sure the
best way to handle the CMS. I can do it manually, using some fairly
basic ASP/HTML and to be honest, that would satisfy most of my needs.
That said everything seems to Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla nowadays and
part of this excersise to update some skills. I've been fannying around
with Wordpress the last few days and while some functionality is
excellent, a lot of what I'm wanting it to do is frustrating me. I know
shag all php so hacks and workarounds are not going to happen.
The question is should I persevere with Wordpress and keep looking at
forums, plug ins etc or just sack it all off and get it done in ASP?
I'd go with Wordpress and More Fields plugin
http://labs.dagensskiva.com/plugins/more-fields/

'It probably depends a bit exactly what you needs the website to do. For example, if you just want a few pages of text and images up then Drupal is going to be overkill and more complex than you need.

If it's a blog-like thing that you want then WordPress is extremely good. It's also good at doing very simple websites with a news module, for example.

Another good option would be CMS Made Simple (http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/). Which is a little less restrictive but also pretty simple.

If the ony choice is Textpattern or Drupal, and you just wants a simple brochure-type site, then I'd recommend Textpattern.'

I don't actually know anything about all this, but this answer was posted elsewhere in response to a very similar question. I hope it helps.