ministry website

[colmustard]

http://www.tftyouth.com

 

I would like some feedback on my newest client project. It is still in heavy development but complete enough for review.

The site is built on modxcms, wordpress, and magento commerce. (the store is not live yet)

[radar]

Well aside from my general distaste of wordpress, modxcms, and pretty much all prebuilt software..  the site load time is horrendous..  i spent about 40 seconds on the site, then left as it still had 60 images to load. 

[KevinM1]

Don't use HTML to re-size your images.  Make them the proper size in your image editing software.  Why?  Because the browser has to download the full big image before HTML adjusts the size.  That severely increases load time.

[colmustard]

yeah i normally don't, but I designed the system to be as easy for the client to manage the content as possible. He uploads the images to one place and it is displayed throughout the site. I do have an option in there for image thumbnails but it doesn't look like he's using it.

[radar]

so what you do is re-do the image uploading thing, force the thumbnail -- and resize the image to the true size it should be on the fly.

[colmustard]

do you mean make the thumbnail required, or is there a way using php to simply create the thumbnail automatically (this would be best)

[radar]

well, you can create a thumbnail on the fly with javascript.  php there might but i im not sure on that one.

[colmustard]

thank you radar, this is very useful 

[ThunderVike]

I just wonder how much experience you have as a website designer.  I have a screamingly fast connection, far above international averages, and your site was a pain to upload just for the FIRST page. 

 

As an example of things you are doing painfully wrong---

 

You have 28 images loading from the 4 separate css stylesheets at 780k and then more outrageously:

34 MORE images load directly at 6851k  6,851 K ! of IMAGES on top of the 780K

 

This is a phenomenal load on anybody's experience with this website!  While 7 separate javascripts are called along with 4 CSS stylesheets which then make calls for 28 images, and then those 34 humongous images that then must be RE-sized by the user's browser and computer...and the javascripts can't do most of their work until they have all the relevant images they are connected to....

 

This is something that might be sitting on a closed network, intranet where everyone is connected by direct-to-office server Megabyte speed.

 

You are really going to have to use some new techniques, probably including sprites manipulated by css.

 

I am sorry, but this site is totally unrealistic technically speaking.

 

One of your images is 1,653 K and is dimensioned at 2775px by 2192px....are you serious?  Just one example...

[ThunderVike]

colmustard, you say that Wordpress is also used AND modx cms software. So, I don't get why both and how you have cobbled them together.

 

But Wordpress already installs and uses php software to resize uploaded images to a certain size and quality as well as make thumbnails automatically.  ...As long as your server has the required image handling modules, which most PHP hosts do these days, and IF a PHP hosting service did NOT have the GD or ImageMagick libraries then this is an inferior hosting service.

 

How can you be "using" Wordpress AND modx together and disable the inbuilt functions to upload images that are re-sized automatically to within usable limits that you have the option to set and with whatever thumbnails you require?

 

Your responses indicate that you are using Wordpress but know nothing about it, somehow.

[Tazerenix]

like above, WOAH, this site took me a very very long time to load, the images are way to many, look into making sprite sheets to decrease load time

However, the design of the website itself is actually not too bad, i like it

Fix that loading though

[colmustard]

@thundervike

 

I am using modxcms for the main part of the site so that the client can maintain all of his pages easily himself.

 

On top of that I created a /blog directory and installed wordpress in there. This is to keep fresh content on his site and to bring in more traffic. Of course both cms's are using separate mysql databases if thats what your getting at?

 

I used something called ditto to re-itterate changes he makes on one page of the site to appear on all pages, so thats a big part of why everything loads so slowly. The images he's been uploading through this system are waaaaaay to big

 

I guess I will just have to have a sit down with the client and explain to him how to resize the images he uploads so that they don't end up being so huge 

and yeah im still pretty amateur at this, but you gotta get your experience somewhere

 

 

[ThunderVike]

WOW...that is complicated.

 

I use to pull together sites with Dreamweaver but as more and more clients wanted to be able to "make their own changes" I had to switch to ASP and then PHP connecting to mySql databases.

 

I started using various PHP scripts for a number of years.

 

But, in the past year after Drupal and various CMS systems I finally focused on Wordpress exclusively.

 

You can do everything with Wordpress and I make mods up the ying yang.

 

And fortunately there are an awful lot of theme designer and plugin creators contributing to Wordpress.

 

Even if start with a theme that I like I always heavily modify the themes, even the plugins.

 

And I have given Users modified dashboards to edit and add and delete articles and put up images, etc.

 

Perhaps you can look around for a PHP based online image processor, so to speak, that uses PHP to compress the size of images.

[colmustard]

yeah Wordpress is amazing, its so flexible

 

now that I think about it, probably would have been the smarter route to use wordpress as the main cms here :(

lol

[radar]

i still take the stance of 100% custom programming as apposed to using drupal, or joomla, or yes even wordpress..  sure it takes a little longer, but the client gets only the functions they need and/or want.

[AtlasC1]

I'm curious and would like to ask everyone here: is ImageMagick still commonly used? I figured it pertains to this thread, and I would also like to know, myself.

 

-jm

[radar]

ImageMagick is still used, but not as frequently as the GD Lib.

[ThunderVike]

Radar, you may be correct....IF you are absolutely a master at PHP.

 

When you consider that the people who code and have coded Wordpress over the years ARE PHP masters and they ARE STILL LEARNING every single day it makes them the Masters of the Masters.

 

If you are at the level that you custom code each function in a client's website does that mean that you do not borrow or are not inspired by thousands of other coder's examples posted on the internet?

 

Each PHP expert has become an expert in a FEW issues above the normal level of mastery. These are the guys who other experts ask for help from because PHP is  a HUGE HUGE code base of expressions and functions and NOBODY is equally expert on the multitudinous ways to solve the same problem.  As any PHP forum will show.

 

The thing I began to appreciate about Wordpress is that thousands of people have contributed to it over years, not just ADDING functions, but STREAMLINING functions, as well.  You get the benefit of a huge, huge expert catalogue of ways to solve not just PHP problems but CSS and Javascript issues.

 

About a year and a half ago, after a year of skepticism, I gained enough experience to understand how to use and modify Wordpress.  And then I saw that it quickly gave me everything I needed for any website. And since I don't want my Wordpress websites to LOOK LIKE WORDPRESS I discovered how to use Wordpress as a very competent and "unlimited" CMS. And to radically customize templates to take out the appearance of a blog-based site.

 

When I do a Wordpress site I clean out out the functions that I don't need and that I am pretty confident will not be needed by some essential plugin.

 

And I rewrite the plugins to accomplish more specifically what I need.

 

And then I keep the plugins to a minimum.

 

I think you would be hard-pressed as a coder to offer your clients all the capability of Wordpress.

 

 

[colmustard]

interesting, I have seen people using wordpress as a standalone cms for non-blog websites, but I've just never seen the practicality in it as you can accomplish the same effects using another cms or framework that is built specifically for the functionality you are trying to create in a much more time efficient manner.

[ThunderVike]

colmustard, you say...

 

"interesting, I have seen people using wordpress as a standalone cms for non-blog websites, but I've just never seen the practicality in it as you can accomplish the same effects using another cms or framework that is built specifically for the functionality you are trying to create in a much more time efficient manner."

 

Installing WP is extremely easy and as soon as it is up you can start writing pages and then specify which one is the index page, and then generate post afer post or page after page.  Indicate which pages are linked to which pages.  Do an entire site by simply selecting that these are Pages and not posts.  Indicate which pages are related to each other by categories you make up,...whatever.

 

I just do not see what "practicality" you can be talking about.  I have just looked at mod x and ez publish.  Despite the name ez publish looks like it is is a long learning curve.

 

They talk about components and cool stuff but not once anywhere on the website do they actually get "user-friendly" the way WordPress does.  It is definitely a geek-techno website that is written by engineers.

 

Mod X looks cool and more upfront user-friendly but YOU, colmustard, say you are using mod x AND Wordpress to get the "functionality" you are trying to create "in a more time efficient manner", but, honestly, you are not even using WordPress's everyday functions.

 

Your site is suffering some huge issues so I don't think you have enough of a grasp to even compare "usability" or "functionality" between CMS programs, complex or simple.

 

If you want to talk about "usability"....everything, and I mean everything is EASILY achieved using WordPress. 

 

 

[radar]

Wordpress might be a great product for your website, and other websites you go.  However as a custom programmer, my clients have the websites that are so absurdly difficult to do in any pre-built CMS that it only makes sense to build 100% custom.

 

With that being said, I am however seeing trends in my client websites and i am working on my own CMS that will allow me to do all the things I need to do, such as having the option to use an ajax navigation menu, or to not use an ajax navigation menu.  to use smart folders or to use ?pg=blah&i=blah type url system...

 

as well as the ability to add ajax checking and submitting to some form buttons but not other form buttons, and allow me to choose which ajax function to add into the particular button...

 

allowing the ability to add ajax countdown's for items remaining, ajax calendars, etc.. 

 

these are things that i think you'd be hard pressed to find WP doing.

[colmustard]

jeez thundervike, don't take me not personally preferring wordpress as a standalone cms for the websites I create as a personal attack or anything...

 

To create the functionality that I implemented in this site purely in wordpress would have taken MUCH MUCH longer than it would have using the system I have put in place, its not a flaw in wordpress, its just simply not what the platform is designed for.

 

 

I apologize for offending you so badly in my own development decisions.

[gfxguru]

i still take the stance of 100% custom programming as apposed to using drupal, or joomla, or yes even wordpress..  sure it takes a little longer, but the client gets only the functions they need and/or want.

 

Why recreate the wheel? Most opensource platforms are created by developers, used by the same and tweaked along the way. So the older platform, the more stable it becomes. This is usually the case although last time I looked Magento had something like more then 10,000 files. This can be a huge learning curve but I don't think a developer could sit down a code such functionality within 6 months or even a year....(debugging, stabilizing, etc)

[wigpip]

I tend to agree with radar, from experience custom built is better in the long run. There is a place for things like WordPress and Joomla etc., and that's when the client has asked for it or the developer has given them the ups and downs of both options and knows what they are getting into. I'ts frustrating when clients don't understand why their site can't be modified easily, it's because the developer didn't tell them they were using third party tools and templates in the first place.