Content Management Systems!!

A content management system is can be as in depth as you want it to be, for those who do not know a scripting or programming language, it is easy. Those who do know PHP, Java, Python, HTML/CSS, or any combination, the customizations are endless. CMS’s are designed with non-tech savvy consumers in mind.

You may feel like you are hacking into alien software, but honestly, it is supposed to be easy for you.

CMS for businesses

So for a business, a CMS will be good and efficient. It has features that will help grow your business such as being faster to create pages than a basic website, greater consistency, better flexibility, great security, and it is cheaper.

Some of the better features of a content management system are the ability to have a language manager, post polls, endless menu customizations, and having a search button for your site. There are so much more, but these are the ones related specifically to joomla.

Not To Mention It Also Will Tie Your Shoes

CMS Evaluation

Now, having coffee pre-made for you is cool and all, but it is a bit too much. Do not add too much extra functionality you’ll never use. The only way to be exempt from this is if you have a site about all the different functionality you could have, but that probably isn’t what yours is about.

The right CMS regardless should be easy for non-geeks to use and have the ability to be changed into something beautiful like one of Bob Ross’ paintings.

The most important part you should look for when choosing a CMS is ease, speed, and simplicity. You want it to be fast, easy, and efficient, all websites should strive for this.

More information here!

Search Engines!

Search engines do not work well with a CMS. Dynamic URLs, bad Meta tags and keyword poor URLs make it quite complicated. Having your site be number 1 on Google isn’t the easiest thing to accomplish and takes a long time. Don't get mad at the designer you hired because you can not get your face to pop up as the first thing on Google when you search for "cool" 

Puppy Sarcasm. You Will Never Be This Cool, But He Tries To
Make You Feel Good About Yourself

Best Way to Become Better With A CMS?

The easiest way to learn more about CMS’s are to do research and to build one yourself. You can talk of painting all day, but that gives you no advantage with holding a paintbrush.

Yes, Second Reference To Bob Ross In This Blog! BOB ROSS FTW!

Until next time, your friendly neighborhood dreamer, Nick Stamper

The 3 Best CSS Resources Every Designer Should Know

So you want to be a web guru, a CSS master, use web standards with the dedication of a monk? Well I have a few links that may be quite useful for you to learn and grow from a young grasshopper to the greatest to ever create a website.

Bruce Lee said, “Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water my friend.”
This being said, before you sit down and write, just realize, you have power to do a lot with the water you possess. You should always be trying to find new techniques and more effective ways to go about doing anything, just like water trying to find the path with the least resistance. 

DocHub

Dochub is for CSS, HTML, JavaScript, DOM, JQuery, and PHP. DocHub has an amazing list of CSS properties, summaries about them, examples, syntax, and browser compatibility lists for each. The tutorial (which is actually from Mozilla) is based on CSS 2.1, but quite helpful for those who are starting out.

The HTML page has lists of tags, but no tutorials. The organization on all pages is lackluster, but is still great for reference.

Mozilla Developer Network

Mozilla has an amazing set of tutorials about CSS that is split into three categories, introductory, intermediate, and advanced. When I had originally found this website, I jumped straight to the advanced section and watched the tutorials on CSS3. It felt as if nothing was left out and the author was very strategic about how he said things and brought things onto the screen. I wish there were more of these tutorials because the author seems like a good teacher.

These tutorials will not be something that is referenced time and time again, but it is good to see and get a foot in the door to understand how CSS works and how to use it.

AListApart a

A List Apart is full of articles about everything to do with the web as a designer. With 290 code articles, and 160 design articles, it will keep you reading and researching for a lengthy stint. “Floats 101,” “Positioning 101,” “CSS3 Bling in the real world,” who wouldn't want to read these articles. It covers everything from CSS sprites to separation of content and design. This is good for just browsing possible solutions for your website, but not a good walk through from start to finish for creating a website.

Web Standards

By time this is being read by someone out on the Internet looking for good CSS/HTML/Web Standards tutorials, the web standards may have changed. Our good friends over at XKCD can help a little bit better with this one.

Until next time, your friendly neighborhood dreamer, Nick Stamper

Presentation of the Future

I will be a bit technical in this blog, but I will help start with the beginning of what CSS is and what it does. CSS is an acronym for Cascading Style Sheet. Every webpage should have a separate CSS file that has rules that tell the HTML how to look and what to do. This CSS sheet is linked into the HTML to help make the HTML less bloated. Without these rules your webpage will be black and white with basic styling like one font at one size, and, well that’s it. No photos, no colors, no background.

Here is a good analogy, HTML is like speaking of a noun, which states what something is. If I say that is a car, you understand that whatever I am speaking about is a car. To add values or properties to this car is adding in adjectives to this noun. These adjectives, or the values and properties, are like the styles in a CSS sheet.

The Long Rich Deep History (from 1994)

The World Wide Web Consortium, which is basically the united nations of web development,  had introduced 9 different style sheets and dwindled it down to 2 to become what we know today as CSS. In 1995 the W3C had a workshop on style sheets proposed ideas and a structure for CSS 1. Here is the agenda to the workshop. There were many times that CSS level one recommendations were revised and updated, while the CSS level 2 drafts began in 1997, and CSS level 3 drafts began in 1999.

Today CSS 3 is not fully compatible with all browsers, but is used quite often.

I assume this is the security at the W3C headquarters, and they really like cats.

So What Exactly Are We Talking About?

CSS essentially helps to make your website look good. I could talk about this all day, but showing you is much easier to grab the concept. Here is the site in its full entirety.

And here it is without CSS.

As you can see, it is much more elegant and aesthetic. Why wouldn’t you want to do this for your website?

Technical Features

CSS has its own syntax which isn’t too hard to understand. www.HTMLdog.com is a favorite resource for me. It has tutorials, reference sections, articles, and examples that are extensively useful.

Now CSS3 has stepped it up and has more features, with often times less code. HTMLdog does not have CSS3 features yet, but here are some features that are quite useful.

Some of the most exciting new features are box-shadows, multiple backgrounds, opacity with RGBA, HSL, and HSLA colors, text-shadows, and multi-column layouts. Transform and Transition is one that is still not being used to its full extent. The best example I can find involves a javascript file, which will be held back for a different blog later on, but uses the transform and transitions very creatively.

There is much more to look into with new CSS features. You are essentially a young child, curious and enlightened by the unknown. So go explore and try something new, the worst that will happen is you will learn something.

If you have a pet tiger, the road may be safer.

Watch Out For Cow Pies!

The road will not be a paved highway, it will be an off-road path, so in doing so, try to make sure that you watch where you step. You may design something that surpasses the Mona Lisa in beauty, and when you open it up in Internet Explorer, it looks like a bad Picasso piece.

Oh The Beauty!

There will be kinks and bumps in the road and the only way to battle that is to expect it and seek out solutions.

Conclusion

Whether you are new to web design, or feel as if you are a guru, practice makes perfect. You are never alone in your search for creating beautiful websites. There are generators, tutorials, techniques, and inspiration  everywhere!

Your journey will be long, so a fore warning, the internet is obsessed with cats. So I figured I would go ahead and help out to. Enjoy the video!