Is WordPress right for me?

  • I’m not exactly new to amateur web site development, having played around with FrontPage since about 1996, but I’ve recently become stumped on adding a blog to my personal web site. Most of the (mac) apps like iWeb, RapidWeaver and Sandvox seem to take the approach that you’re starting afresh, and your blog site will be your web site, rather than just an element in it. They are also very themes-based too, which makes it difficult for me to incoprorate them seemlessly into my site.

    I’ll be honest, the coding of my website is nothing to be proud of, I can use FrontPage and have an understanding of HTML and the basics of CSS. All I really want is to be able to incorporate some blogging functionality into my site. The only option I’ve really come up with is WordPress, but having installed it onto my server, I’m a bit overwhelmed as to where to start; I’m only doing this for fun in limited spare time; I haven’t got the time or inclination to learn the concepts and syntx of PHP or understand CSS to any really great level – so is WordPress the right thing for me, or should I be looking elsewhere?

    Sure, it would be easy just to say “go back to iWeb”, but although I’m an amateur I know what I want, and the apps I mentioned before are not going to give me that. I don’t want my content bar on the right, I don’t want my blog entry titles in red! But I want to be able to change these without having to spend days and weeks learning the “geek stuff” (no offence to anybody intended!). Or do I not have a choice?

    Thanks!

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  • Well, I would just browse the themes until you find something you like. If you still need to change a colour of something, just provide specific info to this forum, and people will help you.

    The colours and layout are pretty much always controlled through the CSS file. So if you study anything, study css.

    PHP isn’t necessary to know as much for your specific concerns. Plugins will likely provide most of the functions you will ever require. If you can ftp the files into place, and follow simple instructions, you should have no php related problems.

    theme viewer – https://themes.wordpress.net/

    Thread Starter neiljones

    (@neiljones)

    Thanks, I guessed that this was all going to come down to CSS in the end. I had a bit of a think about what I’m actually after, and sort of came up with this:

    I guess a blog (in general) can made up of a number of elements, such as: a “front page” with recent articles in summary form (that link to the actual article), an archive, a calender, etc. What I think I’m looking for is just a simple way of including any one of these “elements” within a div on my existing pages, rather than the blog being the actual page/site itself. Maybe I’ve oversimplified it, but I’m just surprised that their isn’t anything that’ll let me do this. I know I could use an iframe, but that would seem a rather messy solution.

    Best I start studying some of those WordPress templates then!

    although not really kosher anymore, you could use an iframe.

    There are other ways to do it, but they get complicated with php. you need to rewrite urls and such, and process every call to the blog through a special php page. From what it sounds like, that’s not something you want to take on.

    Another option might be for you to use https://magpierss.sf.net to suck content from your blog and display it on your site. It uses php, but the calls are simple cut and paste type coding.

Viewing 3 replies - 1 through 3 (of 3 total)
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