I have a confession to make...

sam09 · 10-12-09, 00:14

I don't like WordPress. I have decided after spending the last few hours tryin to figure out how to get a drop down menu at the top

! Which it would seem is not very easy. Even though in my theme (that I made, and bought a program to make it) it has them and made me pick all the colours for it????!!!

As much as it meant to be a really simple way to build a site....to me it all seems rather tedious and not very straight forward. I even managed to work Dreamweaver...and started making some nifty looking pages when I realised it is very complicated (to me) to get a site from dreamweaver to WordPress.
I don't know if may it' not the the mst suitable for me as I plan to make a shop, not a blog, but whatever it is it has me pulling my hair out

!!!!

Is it just me...or am I just a slow learner????

Sam

Canary Dwarf · 10-12-09, 01:39

Sam, it's not you
I must admit I am impressed that you even gave it a go. Choosing one of the many free or paid-for templates and adding content is the easy part of WordPress. Designing your own theme and trying to edit it in Dreamweaver is going to prove very difficult for a beginner.

If you're determined to do it yourslef, search for WordPress themes, find a good one and use a CSS editor like Style Master (working demo available: Style Master CSS Editor for Windows and Mac OS X)

Can I ask what is the drop-down far? If it's to navigate to pages, you'd be better off without it from a usability point-of-view.

There is a plug-in to enable WordPress for ecommerce, but also have a look at some of the free open source shopping cart systems around.

Gordon N · 10-12-09, 08:09

Oh dear, someone else who thinks us developers have an easy job that anyone can do overnight!

Depending on how many items you are planning to list within your store wordpress will be fine with the right plugins, if the number is fairly large then I would look to a proper ecommerce app, which as Mark says above are also available as free open source.

As far as developing a theme for WP is concerned, I never use anything like dreamweaver - trying to get a wysiwyg tool to create a theme is a pain as you have very little control over the actual code created. I use a programmers text editor called e-texteditor which is available with a 30 day free trial. To be totally honest to develop a fully featured wordpress theme and make use of additional plugins within it you will struggle if you don't have a sound understanding of CSS techniques and some basic PHP programming knowledge.

If it's just a couple of wee changes to a free/paid theme that you have, give me a shout and I will see what I can do for you - it's nearly Christmas after all!

doogie · 10-12-09, 11:32

Quote:

Originally Posted by Gordon N

Oh dear, someone else who thinks us developers have an easy job that anyone can do overnight!

I concur!

As an application developer, I try and give pure design tasks a wide berth, and I've never gotten along with anything like Dreamweaver at all!

I generally understand it from a technical point of view, and am able to help out with specific problems (eg my girlfriend stumbled across a few problems customising ZenCart for her online store that I could help with), but it's not something to be taken lightly, unless you're happy to invest the hours on learning what to do, and the right way to do it!

sam09 · 10-12-09, 11:36

Well I gave up on Dreamweaver and got something called Artisteer, which was very good very simple. If you go to loveasifind.co.uk you can see it so far.

I just find it so annoying that things like changeing a font, adding a picture or just making it look non blog (I did manage to fing that 'Comments closed' and delete it to take it off the home page.

I wanted the drop down menu so that when you hovered over 'Boutique' you chould choose from Lingerie, Nightwear or Accessories. But now I guess I'm goign to have to figure out how to just put them on the Boutique page? Something I'm thinking also will not be very simple lol.

I did find another template I like but it looks different when I actually activate it-instead of being in the middle the sheet if stuck the the left of the page. It's called Damasking 1.4 by Elle Media , but don't lik eht everything in little letters.

Maybe I'm just very fussy-or grumpy from staying up til 3am sewing.

Sam

paulmcd · 11-12-09, 11:17

I have to admit I agree with Gordon here. These open source free to use systems very rarely offer to true flexibilty required to create a professional looking and as importantly functional site.

In the good old days I was a bit of a dab hand at hard coding through dreamweaver and the CSS etc. however I haven't kept myself in the loop and over the years my skill set has shifted significantly to a more business perspective. I prefer to look at these things the same way as I do any tradesmen. Find myself a good reliable one and they will do you for life. I wouldn't purchase "plumbing for dummies" to fit a new bathroom, I'd call a plumber and get it done properly.

I'd just always prefer to focus on the stuff that really matters to my business rather and let professionals take care of things when I need specialist work done.

Cheers

Paul

scothost · 12-12-09, 22:07

People these days though are enticed into thinking that its easy with software such as wordpress to create a stunningly visual site.

When in fact it really is not designed to acheive anything more than blog.

Granted the addons can change it into something more appealling but its not the easiest to work with unless all you want is a blog.

Artisteer is actually quite good for the novice, wont create anything spectacular and the output code is a bit arse from tit in some ways, but it works.

stugster · 14-12-09, 10:59

Quote:

Originally Posted by sam09

how to get a drop down menu at the top

When you add a page onto the site, make it the child of another page. The drop-down is automatically created for you.

So if you have a Page called "Services" on your wordpress. Create a page called "Knickers". When you create the page, you can select a Parent category for that page. Go ahead and choose Services as the parent

barryhynd · 16-12-09, 21:00

OK - I'm not trying to dismiss web designers here at all but I think someone has to big up Wordpress a little. I was the same as Sam when I first started to mess with Wordpress, it wasn't that intuitive and I never really grasped it that well.

Now though I absolutely love it and I certainly feel like it was worth spending the time initially to figure it all out. There will be many businesses out there (like Sam) who simply cant afford to pay for a web designer because her business is only just starting out. For me (and i'm not an expert) Wordpress is the best there is in terms of being able to get something up there that looks half decent.

It's certainly not just a blog software and it can be actually made to look quite nice by either using a good quality theme or with a little bit of coding. Not trying to plug my own site here but

Business in Scotland? - Support & Advice from Scottish Business Blog

Completely Wordpress based using a theme, I dont think anyone can say it's not attractive (maybe some will

). You then have to look at the new theme frameworks coming out like Thesis that just take Wordpress to an entirely different level of customisation (and yes i'm experimenting with it just now so maybe a little biased)

I will acknowledge that it does take a little work keeping it up to date and secure particularly if you are using many plugins etc.

Sam - I would say give Wordpress a bit more time and i'm sure you'll start to get on better. There are more than a few people on here who know Wordpress quite well so take the chance to tap them for their knowledge. You dont need to spend three hours trying to figure something out, shove a post up about it and i'm sure you'll get some speedy replies

Canary Dwarf · 16-12-09, 21:29

Barry, you're absolutely right. WordPress is an ideal platform for people to publish their own professional website without a web designer. (although they can help!)

The mistake Sam has made is to take WordPress and to try and edit it with Dreamweaver. WordPress is a CSS product and Dreamweaver is not a very good CSS editor.

As you say, it's not blog software any more and I've seen some pretty amazing sites made on WordPress. We're using it more and more, and recommending it for our clients as it takes a large part of the development cost away from them and is very customisable.

The lesson to be learned though is don't jump in at the deep end, or you'll end up hating it before you've given it a chance. Start with a theme, read the codex and make your modifications step-by-step.

Investing heaps of development time into a web project is counterproductive if it's not your core skill. You might as well pay someone to do it and do what you do best.

WordPress has improved vastly over the past couple of years, and that has taken it to a new consumer level. In fact, it just won the best overall CMS award in the 2009 Open Source CMS Awards, a big leap from its placement last year.

Coincidentally, I blogged about this today: WordPress is a winner - and we work with winners | Canary Dwarf, Moray's web design specialists