Arin
09-03-2011, 02:47 PM
I inherited a website a few years back which was written completely in broken HTML. It has a top rated google ranking with thousands of links to pages on the site as well as photos hosted on the site.
I started out by simply rewriting all of the code by hand to make everything look good. It’s probably one of the best in the industry, but it’s getting out of hand! Essentially I did a screen scrape of the whole site. To preserve all the old links into the site, I only moved a few items and made .htaccess rewrites to the links.
The time has come to make the site better, make it database driven with some sort of a content management system, and make it easy to update and more organized. The problem I’m running into is actually where to start. Every time I attempt to pick up one system or another, I realize conditions that may prevent me from doing what I want to do.
Here’s the direction the site needs to go and some of my concerns:
1. I need to make a multi national site. I need .com addresses and .co.uk addresses and about everything else. Right now other people handle the other sites while I do all of the US sites. Obviously they have no idea when I update the main site. Everything is out of sync and chaotic.
I want to manage everything from the .com address with sites linking in from like the .co.uk site. When they come in from the co.uk address, they will automatically be in the UK version of the site. That means the news section will display extra UK only news, UK sales, UK pricing, UK events, and so on.
The only company site that I can see doing something similar to this seems to be apple.com. Everything looks the same, but the prices change and the store changes.
2. The site needs more organization. Currently there are large directories of photos and pages very unorganized. I fear losing my superb google ranking and making broken links by organizing everything. I also fear my rewrite files would get large, slow down the site, and maybe disorganized if I reorganize everything.
3. The site does have store front on it, but I don’t use the store front for product information. It’s like the Apple website in that I have product pages that are custom and nice looking with a price, but then I actually have a store front to purchase the items. I wrote the product information pages in html/php. The product application guides are all written by hand and are not always accurate / hard to update. The prices on the product pages just use a PHP script I wrote to link to the price in my online store.
Each country that’s a main importer will essentially have their own online store. Again, I don’t want other countries messing it u so I’ll probably want to handle adding items to the store. I really only want to do it once though! All I want them to manage are their orders, their prices and their shipping information. I’m using interspire shopping cart right now.
4. The site uses so many different plug in applications like news from wordpress, something for my dealer locator, the store, photos from flickr, videos from youtube, and google calendars. If I use a CMS I may be limited in what I can do for news and dealer locators unless I write it all my self I assume. I don’t know if I can do that with the skill set I have and the division of my time. I don’t want to lose the flickr gallery links on the site, all of the uploaded photos to my wordpress news items, youtube page links…. You get the idea.
5. Every now and then I need to write PHP and some jquery on the page for one reason or another. When I looked into a framework like Django, I would often into a situation where my lack of knowledge would prevent me from doing something simple. For this reason, I really want the ability to use some PHP.
6. I need to make application guides and I need to make them in a database. Right now, some of the guide is hosted in a few different XML files I manually edit. Then on the actual pages of linked products, I have more of the application guide which is all hand written. Obviously it gets out of sync and it’s hard to manage it. The only reason I don’t have it all database driven now is because I every time I try to make the application guide dynamic, I come up with conditions or exceptions where it will not work. I’m working to change that.
7. I like using dream weaver to write my code simply because it has code helpers (start typing and it finishes the syntax). I also dig the fact it lets me indent code and I also like how it lets me put the items to the site. I don’t use the visual crap, I write it all by hand. When using some CMS systems that I edit from a web interface, I hate it. I can’t hit tab to indent code. There’s no code syntax helpers. I just don’t like it! I feel like I want some sort of program to run on my mac to manage the site.
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Ok, that’s all I can think of right now. What I’m looking for is a start. I want to use a CMS for my site but I need to make sure I don’t spend a long time and money only to realize what I’ve chosen is limited, not what I need, the wrong thing, a crappy CMS that’s easily hackable, slow or just about everything else anyone can come up with.
Can anyone give me a good starting point so I can begin researching how to do this right?
Thank you!
I started out by simply rewriting all of the code by hand to make everything look good. It’s probably one of the best in the industry, but it’s getting out of hand! Essentially I did a screen scrape of the whole site. To preserve all the old links into the site, I only moved a few items and made .htaccess rewrites to the links.
The time has come to make the site better, make it database driven with some sort of a content management system, and make it easy to update and more organized. The problem I’m running into is actually where to start. Every time I attempt to pick up one system or another, I realize conditions that may prevent me from doing what I want to do.
Here’s the direction the site needs to go and some of my concerns:
1. I need to make a multi national site. I need .com addresses and .co.uk addresses and about everything else. Right now other people handle the other sites while I do all of the US sites. Obviously they have no idea when I update the main site. Everything is out of sync and chaotic.
I want to manage everything from the .com address with sites linking in from like the .co.uk site. When they come in from the co.uk address, they will automatically be in the UK version of the site. That means the news section will display extra UK only news, UK sales, UK pricing, UK events, and so on.
The only company site that I can see doing something similar to this seems to be apple.com. Everything looks the same, but the prices change and the store changes.
2. The site needs more organization. Currently there are large directories of photos and pages very unorganized. I fear losing my superb google ranking and making broken links by organizing everything. I also fear my rewrite files would get large, slow down the site, and maybe disorganized if I reorganize everything.
3. The site does have store front on it, but I don’t use the store front for product information. It’s like the Apple website in that I have product pages that are custom and nice looking with a price, but then I actually have a store front to purchase the items. I wrote the product information pages in html/php. The product application guides are all written by hand and are not always accurate / hard to update. The prices on the product pages just use a PHP script I wrote to link to the price in my online store.
Each country that’s a main importer will essentially have their own online store. Again, I don’t want other countries messing it u so I’ll probably want to handle adding items to the store. I really only want to do it once though! All I want them to manage are their orders, their prices and their shipping information. I’m using interspire shopping cart right now.
4. The site uses so many different plug in applications like news from wordpress, something for my dealer locator, the store, photos from flickr, videos from youtube, and google calendars. If I use a CMS I may be limited in what I can do for news and dealer locators unless I write it all my self I assume. I don’t know if I can do that with the skill set I have and the division of my time. I don’t want to lose the flickr gallery links on the site, all of the uploaded photos to my wordpress news items, youtube page links…. You get the idea.
5. Every now and then I need to write PHP and some jquery on the page for one reason or another. When I looked into a framework like Django, I would often into a situation where my lack of knowledge would prevent me from doing something simple. For this reason, I really want the ability to use some PHP.
6. I need to make application guides and I need to make them in a database. Right now, some of the guide is hosted in a few different XML files I manually edit. Then on the actual pages of linked products, I have more of the application guide which is all hand written. Obviously it gets out of sync and it’s hard to manage it. The only reason I don’t have it all database driven now is because I every time I try to make the application guide dynamic, I come up with conditions or exceptions where it will not work. I’m working to change that.
7. I like using dream weaver to write my code simply because it has code helpers (start typing and it finishes the syntax). I also dig the fact it lets me indent code and I also like how it lets me put the items to the site. I don’t use the visual crap, I write it all by hand. When using some CMS systems that I edit from a web interface, I hate it. I can’t hit tab to indent code. There’s no code syntax helpers. I just don’t like it! I feel like I want some sort of program to run on my mac to manage the site.
----
Ok, that’s all I can think of right now. What I’m looking for is a start. I want to use a CMS for my site but I need to make sure I don’t spend a long time and money only to realize what I’ve chosen is limited, not what I need, the wrong thing, a crappy CMS that’s easily hackable, slow or just about everything else anyone can come up with.
Can anyone give me a good starting point so I can begin researching how to do this right?
Thank you!