Biiigggg Project
Mon, 2011-10-10 21:59
Hey all, so I was asked to make a website for my friend for her photography, and she wants it to look really professional and fancy. She is going to use this site as a way of displaying her pictures that she's taken and have contact info and stuff. The problem is, I've never made a website before and I don't know how to really make it useful. What language should I use for it? I heard that PHP is good, and that HTML is too limited to make a good site out of, but what do I need to learn in order to make this site look good, and where can I learn this? (thanks)
Tue, 2011-10-11 00:57
#2
Try Drupal 
I built this quick photogrpahy site with Drupal a few months ago
With Drupal you can get a theme, build on it. Grab modules, build on them.
Are you looking at hosting it as well? To make a quality site there is a lot that goes into it, even if you use a CMS like Drupal.
Tue, 2011-10-11 06:23
#3
I would also recommend Drupal or Wordpress. If it is a simple site I think Wordpress would be fantastic. Drupal is more flexible but can be a bit harder to learn how to set up and administer.
There are endless of themes out there that you can purchase for use. They are usually around $50-$60.
Check out Chris Coyiers site www.css-tricks.com if you want to go with Wordpress. He has great tutorials on how to get started.
Tue, 2011-10-11 07:04
#4
Ha ha ha! I'm old school I guess... I'd say learn HTML, JavaScript, PHP, MySql, and AJAX. But that's just me 
Tue, 2011-10-11 09:28
#5
Sorry my last response was short and not informative at all. I wasn't really free to comment then, I am now.
I agree with span largley. Wordpress is great for blogs and simpler sites because it is a very focused CMS. For a photography site Wordpress works well, but for truly rich content and the flexibility to deliver that content in creative ways, you want something like Drupal.
I showed off that photography site I did before in my last post. I put that site together in about 3 hours. Drupal is awesome for quick and easy sites, or deep complex and difficult sites (like WiBit. WiBit is based on Drupal). The thing with Drupal though is you'll need to know a good bit about SQL, PHP, HTML, and CSS. This is true for Wordpress too if you get into really customizing it.
Both Wordpress and Drupal have very deep developer communities that are hell-bent on helping. You'll be able to find a plethora of resources to help you build your site once you know what questions you need to ask. Here are a few things to get you started:
Pro Drupal Development, Second Edition
Professional WordPress (Wrox Programmer to Programmer)
PHP and MySQL Web Development (4th Edition)
Those are a couple of things to get you going. Another thing to consider is hosting. How are you hosting this? Wordpress's site will host a Wordpress blog for you, but Drupal does not host on it's own. The absolute best option for any hosting for Drupal, if you don't want to do it yourself, is this: https://getpantheon.com/
Good luck to you and if you have any questions along the way don't hesitate to ask! We're here to help!
Tue, 2011-10-11 23:09
#6
Thank you guys so much for your replies, they're all really helpful. I do like the idea of Drupal, so I have been looking at that. Currently, though, I do not have a domain to work with, and my friend is buying one soon. Do I need that domain to even start? Because from what I've seen right now, I need to download the files for drupal then upload it to the domain.
Wed, 2011-10-12 00:16
#7
Well the domain is just what you point at so you technically don't need the domain to start depending on how you proceed. You can star by working with a local server on your personal machine and then transfer the site to your host when you're ready for that step.
If you're on Windows I like XAMPP. There are any number of other solutions, but the most common server config is any variation of LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) wich XAMPP is a quick install LAMP variant for Windows and other platforms.
Remember that the domain is seperate from your host. If your friend buys a domain from GoDaddy.com that doesn't mean you have to host the site there. You can host it yourself and use something like DynDNS to dyanically resolve a non-static IP. You can use Amazon's AWS stuff also which is very cool. You can also go with Pantheon as I suggested in a previous reply.
I would not recommend using GoDaddy, or the vast majority of hosting providors, for your host. In my opinion you're always better off hosting your own stuff. Be that through AWS or through your own physical box. If you have to get hosted go with Pantheon. Those guys do amazing things!
If you do go with Pantheon keep in mind then from the start that you're not going to be using regular Drupal. Drupal comes in flavors. With Pantheon--which is built for high-volume sites--you're going to be using Pressflow Drupal. You can find out more about Pressflow here. Pressflow is a truley awesome Drupal flavor. It does everything Drupal should do. It is actively maintained so any modules you'll find for Drupal work with Pressflow, and any security patches to Drupal core will be immediately applied to Pressflow.
Lastly when "Doing it with Drupal" you should consider versioning. Drupal's most current stable version is Drupal 7. D7 is fairly new though and there isn't a lot of modules out there for it yet. Its also kinda inefficient in my opinion. I'll write a blog or something about D7 on my personal website at some point. Drupal 6 is out there and has a whole lot of support. Lots of modules, lots of tutorials, lots of everything. The problem with going with D6 is that you're starting out a version behind. From D5 to D6 wasn't a big jump, but D7 is a very different system from D6. The database abstraction layer, for instance, is completely changed. If you do any custom module work for D6 it will not easily be ported to D7. If you start a version behind you'll have to play catch-up that much more when it is time to upgrade.
Out of all the topics brought up on WiBit: web development and server administration for Drupal is something I, and span, can certainly talk about. We're here if you need us.
Wed, 2011-10-12 00:21
#8
This is probably the best resource for Drupal code and deployment:
Wed, 2011-10-12 20:38
#9
I'm slightly confused as to what a host is, and what the difference is from a host and a domain.
I've been looking at Drupal and I'm making a little site to try it out on my localhost, but when I try to download modules, I keep getting a 403 forbidden error saying that I don't have access to the tar.gz files, any clue why that would happen?
Mon, 2011-10-17 04:59
#10
I'm slightly confused as to what a host is, and what the difference is from a host and a domain.
I've been looking at Drupal and I'm making a little site to try it out on my localhost, but when I try to download modules, I keep getting a 403 forbidden error saying that I don't have access to the tar.gz files, any clue why that would happen?
You should check this out while you're getting started. It will teach you alot of basics and how to prevent alot of common pitfalls.
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Or another site that would let me design the site in a GUI-type thing at a reasonable price?