I need some ideas on how to redesign my own website...

Ignoring the forum and other interactive stuff, because most people there think they're fine enough, and hey, they actually get most of the traffic.

Basically, I want to know two things:

1. What kind of CMS would actually work for my website? Yeah, I was planning on using the one with vBulletin 4, until it actually was released and the amount of bugs and queries put a stop to the idea. Basically, here's the whole deal:

Any such CMS must be HTML/CSS valid. Don't care quite what version, preferrably not XHTML Strict.

Must have some easy import from HTML files, and actually able to handle a decent layout with the sheer amount of pages my site has. That's a problem, because the site has a good couple of thousand pages, and probably a few hundred sections. Most CMS software seems to be written for sites with a very top down heirarchial structure or such like.

I don't actually care for forum or software integration, I always thought it too much effort to maintain bridges for too little reward (again, because software is updated at different times, and waiting for one element to get updated to update the other can be a security issue).

I tried Wordpress for a blog before, but I don't particularly like it (because you basically have to build themes from scratch and it comes with no form of spam prevention, meaning you have to go and get Akismet and half a dozen plugins). I've never tried Drupal or Joomla or anything like that, so I have no idea what they're like. Any good?

2. What to do about a layout? I'm really bored of all the three column layouts, and it's a pain to even change because so many members liked the fixed width one I had before. But the problem is, I want something that's usable (or at least, doesn't clash with anything mentioned by sites like Webpagesthatsuck), validates (HTML and CSS), and looks remotely themed towards my site's content. The problem here is that I can write, modify and code HTML and CSS... but I cannot particularly make images for my life (only sprites in the video game sense), and don't have anything like Photoshop, having to rely on members of my own site that can design quite well.

So, any ideas? I'm trying to find something better to replace the main site at DS Ultimate- Nintendo DS Game information and Glitches. I also want to do this preferrably before I try adding things like a topsite and what not.

 

I can only offer a tidbit of Drupal experience. I wish I had your skills in the coding of HTML and CSS, but how are you with PHP?

I have seen many people that like vB, steer clear of the CMS and use Drupal for the top site, as you are desiring. The bridges for vB so far are stable and active due to this exodus of use. Also, you don't need vBSeo to get friendly URLs. It's in a word, out of the box works with Drupal (plugin of course).

Drupal has blog, has pages, has story, and you can create your own content categories, if you will.


Here is a link to a Showcase forum to get some ideas on what people are doing:

Drupal showcase | drupal.org

I like your approach.

 

Well, I've downloaded both Drupal and Joomla, all I need is to choose one. But can you explain the pages, story, content categories, etc? I already use the vBulletin blog (3.8, I have no plans to upgrade until the Suite CSS is valid, and then probably no plans to use the CMS), and it works fine, but I need the seperate main site thing.

But what approach?

 

The core content that comes with Drupal are Blog, Story, Page, and Forums.

Ok, you've got Blog taken care of and forums.

Story is similar to Blog, but as it says is geared towards that type of content. It's interface is more or less the same as Blog. Really it would be equivalent to Article. Many people want the name changed to that, but it can be changed manually.

Page is meant to be a static Page of content.

Furthermore, you can create your own content categories (e.g., photo gallery using drupal means or bridges to other popular ones, Music, video, etc.). I should actually just say, content types.

I like your approach of looking at alternatives to the vB CMS, while keeping vB forums as your core. It's been on my mind as well. I didn't have the time to tackle Joomla. When I looked at it and researched, relative to Drupal, it is more theme rich and light on the backend meat. I know there have been some cross products that started with Joomla and are now available for Drupal.


When you say main site, maybe help if you describe your min. requirements. You linked to your current and I guess I've not picked up on what your requirements are for the main site (i.e., direct all the content?, portion of it?).

 

I steered away from Drupal and Joomla because of the difficult learning curve, but I'm seriously considering using the much simpler, CMS Made Simple.

CMS Made Simple - Open Source Content Management System

Good luck on whichever option you choose and keep us posted on the progress!

 

Mind you, with inproper settings Drupal and Joomla are quite heavy applications.

Wordpress worked good for me on my sold site. On my current owned forum I use CMPS as CMS

 

Thank you. That's what I needed to know. Most of my site is either Page or Story type content.

But for my site? Requirements? Not sure. The server has PHP and MySQL 5 on it, safe mode off, and those remote URL PHP methods are allowed or whatever, so the technical side shouldn't affect any software I can think of. However, for other requirements?

Well the site probably has about 20 000 files excluding the forums, wiki, etc. Most of these are static information pages with text and pictures, sometimes up to about 50KB (in just the HTML/text). It covers a pretty big list of topics, but I don't need the fan fiction, wiki, forum, blogs or fanlistings converted to whatever format the CMS uses because they use/will use their own systems. I plan to use:

vBulletin 3.8.4 or vBulletin 4 depending for the forums and blogs.

Modifications for the gallery, arcade, etc.

Media Wiki for the wiki.

Custom HTML for the fanlistings, because I like testing web design skills on them.

And probably some automatic fan fiction system for fan fiction. Probably also a topsite powered by whatever as well.

Any recommended system must be able to handle about... a few thousand unique visitors daily, and have some form of comments for articles and such like. Preferrably with a neat news page for the front page.

 

So, what CMS applications have you tried ArnyVee? Just curious, because if anything is seen as easy for you, it should be really easy for me to use myself.

The problem is, Wordpress is a blog foremost, and requires quite some knowledge of editing the style to change it around.

On other news, I've successfully installed the topsite part, and customised it, although it's currently behind .htaccess password protection, and I might try a certain fan fiction management script (because uploading those and converting them to HTML takes forever), like this one (any good?)

eFiction : Automated Archive Software

I hope to try converting my site to some CMS in the upcoming week, although it's still hard to figure out what. It's easy to choose other scripts, because there's like, a clear market leader half the time you can choose to keep stress away (or at least, one half the internet is using for that kind of feature), but I can't find any specific CMS out of Joomla and Drupal that's more used and thought highly of in general.

 

You should give CMS Made Simple a try. Has a new/article as part of the core.

Also CSS/XHTML valid.

 

Well, I know you have vB and as such what I am suggesting is probably not an option, but, I have fallen in love with SMF 2.0. I don't know if this counts as a CMS, but simple portal is all I could have dreamed of. From articles to complete control of what and where, it fit my needs like no other.
For a blog you can always use plugin like SMFBlog and you can create pages and everything. Skinning it is also very easy from what I heard (I use it on one of my side projects - another gaming clan forum - and the guy made a COD4 fluid skin in like 2 days that he released for free. His fixed one was not as nice, and I just got the released copy (SMF team validation), so I haven't really got the site started yet)

 

WP is not just a blog (any more). it's a publishing platform. You can do almost anything you want. with a little knowledge of CSS. and from what I can remember it has all you need:
WordPress › Custom Post Template WordPress Plugins for having a custom look for each post (and page)
WordPress › Import HTML Pages WordPress Plugins for importing HTML pages as it's own pages.
built-in comment system.

And for styling you can use theme frameworks which basically give you a skeleton theme to customize it (from a basic CSS change to heavily php modifications).
Thematic is one of most popular ones and my personal favorite is Hybrid

BTW it can handle thousands of unique visits, just needs right settings.

 

I heard of that before, but I prefer vBulletin personally, so it kinda counts it out. Besides, I'm after something with a more complex system than a portal for articles, since most of my site is not going to share the stylings of the forum sections.

I know it can handle tons of traffic and what not, and I did look at the stylings, but I'm still not sure compared to either Drupal or Joomla, or the other CMS mentioned. I do like the import HTML pages part, is that a plugin available for other CMS systems?

 

I'm not sure about Joomla but Drupal has a plugin : Import HTML | drupal.org

 

Thanks. That kind of thing is exactly what I need to maintain existing file names and what not.

 

Okay, I'm currently trying Drupal, any recommendation for styles? Most seem to have the logo section way too small for easy use with any of my current logos.

 

What version of drupal are you using? I'm assuming v6.15, which iirc is the latest.

There are a ton of available styles. They vary greatly on the logo section. Just go to the Download section of Drupal.org and find THEMES. Most have decent previews and even demo sites available.

One of the things I liked about this aspect b/c I'm not of coding experience like yourself, is the versatility of the Blocks, columns, etc. This sometimes includes logo versatility. I can't recommend one to you. My own site is a personal site, so I don't think it would help you much.


Edit: I can tell you that there are (understandably) good theme developers and the opposite. I don't know if any of the ones on .org are reviewed for completeness. Hence, I've stuck w/ what comes from Acquia. They are very large contributors and have wide choices. You'll see Acquia Marina, Acquia Slate, etc.

 

Trying that basic Acquia theme. I obviously need quite a few modules, the freaking comment form doesn't even have a BB code editor and smilies by default.

 

That is correct. There are many choices out there. That is what I like about it. The community is so large that you have so many offerings. I equate it .org.


If you'd, contact me privately and i can at least share w/ you what I have.

 

Done, I sent a PM.