Building a dynamic web site

[kade119]

I wanted to hear from some of the php gurus, suggestions on creating a very dynamic site, i know to use includes for the header, footer, menu  - any suggestions on ways to structure the site to make it easy to update -

 

What if a client had one or two areas of the site they wanted to update the copy and images?

Would you use a full blown CMS like drupal or develop your own application to do this?

 

thanks

[Catfish]

for simple sites with easy maintenance i would recommend cmsimple www.cmsimple.org

[teamatomic]

Hmm, drupal or similar or my own.

The factors:

your ability

the clients budget

clients time frame

your time frame

your ability to complete within this time frame

 

Seeing as you are asking you really dont have any experience building a CMS so it depends on your and the clients time frame and the clients budget. Can/will they pay for your "on the job training"? If the answer is yes, never turn down a free education!

Otherwise I'd suggest wordpress, it has the shallowest learning curve, is probably the easiest to customize and has a fairly decent set of themes and plugins.

 

 

HTH

Teamatomic

[kade119]

well i usually use joomla, i know the structure of it well and how it works but for clients that do not need something so sophisticated would it be smart to develop a basic CMS for small functions like edit copy or upload new imagery?

 

I basically would like to hear someone tell me how they structure their web sites when not using a CMS, a dynamic web site but not using wordpress, drupal etc... or show me =)

[teamatomic]

I use a two or three column layout with a header and footer. I use the index page as a controller. The content is in includes/content

The files are usually like

header->has the html head stuff

header_page->has the visible header-may be use like header_index,header_about,etc. if there is not a header_xxx for the page called the header_index is used

menu-> builds the left menu from the files in the content folder.determines what is shown by the user_level(if users register and there is an admin area)

page-> displayed by the controller from the menu

footer-> standard footer

if a three column layout the right column is handled by a separate file that display according to the page being displayed, if nothing is found, it, like the header_page file, defaults to the right_index display.

if needed TinyMCE is used for editing. I also use a filemanager from http://phpfm.sourceforge.net/

 

 

HTH

Teamatomic

[Gighalen]

I just use Joomla - even for static sites The themes and modules/components available for it is quite an extensive list, and support is pretty easy to come by.

[oni-kun]

I just use Joomla - even for static sites The themes and modules/components available for it is quite an extensive list, and support is pretty easy to come by.

 

The bloody source is 100mbs+, I don't get that.