Blog-style web page help?

K

krazyklutzykorean

n00b
Joined
May 3, 2007
Messages
15
Some friends and I are starting a website, and for the homepage we would like to be able to post news and information in a blog style format, like the one that penny arcade, red vs blue, and slashdot use. What kind of software do these people use to make their homepages? Right now I only have dreamweaver and I do not know of a way to implement that kind of design with my limited knowledge of html. I do not know any programming languages, only started a few months ago, but I am willing to learn. Please tell me how to design my homepage that way.
Thanks
 
The Penny Arcade front page content system (and the whole site in general, except probably the forums) is most likely implemented with custom code using the Ruby on Rails framework.

I'm unsure what RvB uses, and Slashdot is built on top of Slash, which uses mod_perl. Slash is a pain to deal with though in terms of installation and administration, unless its documentation has become something more than nonexistent in the past few years. Also, unless you have a VPS, dedicated server, or are hosting the site yourself, you won't be able to use Slash since shared hosting doesn't give you mod_perl.

Now I certainly won't say you can't learn and implement a system similar to any of theirs, but I would say that if you're focused more on making content and would rather learn web programming on the side for future work, then I would recommend looking at weblog packages or CMS software like Drupal or MovableType.
 
Aye, check out software like Joomla or ExpressionEngine, they're exactly what you are looking for :). They'll take a little learning, but within a few days you can start working on the infrastructure and have a good base for working with them.
 
I just installed Wordpress on my website for my wife's blog. My host had it available in their Fantastico panel, so it was nothing more than a few clicks to install it. There are thousands of different Wordpress themes, so it's pretty easy to find something that works. And if you can't find one you like, modifying an existing theme is also pretty easy.

You can install wordpress manually, all your host really needs is MySQL and PHP, which almost all of them do. I tried that once, and basically all it took was uploading the files to a dir on the site, then opening the installation php script in a browser.
 
Another vote for Wordpress. It's become a very mature product, and with modules will do most of with larger CMSs can, without all the overhead. Check it out.
 
okay I have tried downloading wordpress (it conveniently was already installed by my domain provider). However, is there any way to put the blog inside of an html that I have made already? I have designed a layout for the site in dreamweaver and I would like to put the blog inside that page. I can make a separate page with just the blog easily with wordpress, but I do not know how to put a blog inside an html that I have already made. Is this possible, and, if so, can I do it with my limited knowledge of programming?
thanks
 
ExpressionEngine can handle that easily. I found it to be a far more powerful system overall.
 
krazyklutzykorean said:
okay I have tried downloading wordpress (it conveniently was already installed by my domain provider). However, is there any way to put the blog inside of an html that I have made already? I have designed a layout for the site in dreamweaver and I would like to put the blog inside that page. I can make a separate page with just the blog easily with wordpress, but I do not know how to put a blog inside an html that I have already made. Is this possible, and, if so, can I do it with my limited knowledge of programming?
thanks
Click to expand...


I just got done doing this on my website. I did it in CSS though so YMMV. What I did was I put all my code leading up to the main content area in the "header.php" file. and then put all the code continueing from the main content area in the "footer.php" file.
Example my header looks like.

Code: 
<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" <?php language_attributes(); ?>>

<head profile="http://gmpg.org/xfn/11">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="<?php bloginfo('html_type'); ?>; charset=<?php bloginfo('charset'); ?>" />

<title><?php bloginfo('name'); ?> <?php if ( is_single() ) { ?> &raquo; Blog Archive <?php } ?> <?php wp_title(); ?></title>

<meta name="generator" content="WordPress <?php bloginfo('version'); ?>" /> <!-- leave this for stats -->
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" />
<meta http-equiv="imagetoolbar" content="false" />
<meta name="MSSmartTagsPreventParsing" content="true" />
<meta name="robots" content="all" />
<meta name="robots" CONTENT="noodp, noydir" />
<meta name="author" content="Steven Brucato" />
<meta name="copyright" content="Copyright (c) 2007, Steven Brucato" />
<meta name="description" content="" />
<meta name="keywords" content="Steven, Brucato, Steven Brucato, Decius, Solutions, Decius Solutions, Web Design, Melbourne, West Melbourne, Central Florida, Space Coast, Central Florida, Web Design Central Florida, Web Design Melbourne" />
<link rel="stylesheet" href="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_url'); ?>" type="text/css" media="screen" />
<link rel="pingback" href="<?php bloginfo('pingback_url'); ?>" />
<link href="<?php bloginfo('stylesheet_directory'); ?>/printer.css" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css" media="print" />

<?php wp_head(); ?>
</head>
<body>
<body id="secondary">
<div id="header"></div>
<div id="content">
  <div class="inside">
    <div id="liquid">
      <div id="main">

and my footer looks like
Code: 
      </div>
      <div class="clear"></div>
    </div>
  </div>
</div>
<div id="footer">
  <div class="inside">
    <p>&copy; 2007 Steven P. Brucato - All rights reserved - <a href="privacy.html">Privacy Policy</a> - <a href="sitemap.html">Site Map</a></p>
  </div>
</div>
</body>
</html>

Now the index file is pretty much what the stock index page is. I haven't done a website in just HTML in years so I really don't know if this will work the way it worked for me, but I'm sure if I'm wrong the fine people on the forum will let me know.

Any questioned PM me.

-Steven
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top