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Chris Needs Some Help with His Site!

Forums New posts
Gene Steinberg

Gene Steinberg

Forum Super Hero
Staff member
Home - Our Strange Planet has lots of great content. But it was built in an old content management system (Mambo), and a store system (VirtueMart) by a Web designer who has been out of the picture for years.

It's sadly in need of updating. The fastest solution would be to upgrade all the forum components and move it into a new system, possibly the Joomla CMS, since Mambo is history.

Anyone here want to volunteer to bring Chris' site up to date? Please start a private conversation with me and I'll send you the details. Thanks.
 
I have two opinions (or theories) about this subject. First, someone should help show him how to maintain his site (if he is interested and has the time). Ya know the old saying "teach a man to fish" opposed to fishing for him. That makes it easy to not depend on others for management because designers do come and go.

My other opinion (for whatever it is worth) is to "keep it simple". Does Chris need a forum on his website? I guess he has to ask what is his intention with the website in this present time. His needs may have changed since a few years ago. I am guessing this site is to promote his books, share some articles and information along with having some web sales involved.

Dreamweaver works great for me. I have had many large websites for my businesses in the past and they get too big and out of hand which makes it hard to update. I prefer the old saying "keep it simple", get to the point, cut through the clutter and make it easy for the viewer to find the info intended to be found.

Maybe Chris needs someone to help him brainstorm and rethink his present day intentions with the site and that may make it easier and more attainable.
 
Thanks for the suggestions. I can't speak for Chris about the design parameters, but he has a forum to moderate here, with us, so I don't think he'd want anything more than some sort of direct link.

As to keeping it simple: Perhaps moving the whole kit and caboodle to WordPress would be best. I don't like the Mambo/Joomla interface, although Chris is welcome to offer his input. It is his site.
 
@gene.
I'd recommend Drupal over Wordpress. The first you do after installing WP is to go check the security updates... and after revision... go check the security updates :)

Drupal is easy to get going and gives him the option of extending it with modules if he really wants to in the future i.e. add a forum, a shop etc..

Wordpress is designed for blogging.. and it's great for that, but once you start tacking other stuff on, it starts to get messy (not least for the person that has to manage it and the code behind it), it wasn't designed to do that. It's a classic mistake of taking one thing that is done very well and then trying to add other things onto it because they think they have to to keep ahead of the competition.

cheers,
bb
 
Chris is now in touch with people about the site upgrade. Thanks everyone.

As to Drupal, I don't know. I've never used it, and we'd certainly need an expert to guide Chris if he chose that route. I have years of experience with WordPress, and there has been only one security revision with the current upgrade, 3.3.1. Such things aren't uncommon in any PHP script. The WordPress developers are very quick on the draw when it comes to critical updates.

The current site has a shop, and there are a number of shopping card plugins for WordPress. There are also fairly simple ways to get the content, if not the templates, from Mambo and Joomla into WordPress. The process of migrating to Drupal appear more complicated, based on my reading of their documentation.

But I'm no here to argue the point. I'm sure Chris will consider all possible options before going ahead with a final conversion to a new system. Thanks for the suggestion.
 
Hey Gene,
Me neither, I was just coming at it from a zero based review of both IMHO :)
I'm a pro php dev so of course I appreciate the point about it not being uncommon - however, to that end, it fundamentally comes down to the developer(s) that wrote the code and how skilled they are - you can write bad/ insecure code in any language :D - and whilst the WP devs are working hard to improve it, there is still a helluva lot of spaghetti code in there that people don't wanna touch because it's so tightly coupled with core configuration and bootstrapping code.

Wordpress has got better because the obvious exploits have been patched . If you're supporting Chris then of course it make sense to go with WP. Go with what you know and what you're comfortable with unless you have the time to dedicate for learning something new.

Hope all goes well.

bb
 
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