PlanetPhotoshop CMS

[tsunami7]

How is Planet Photoshop updating the main page, and tutorials? I'm assuming it's some sort of CMS system, but I'm curious if it's a custom one, or something off the shelf?

[Jason_The_Adams]

I think it's fairly safe to assume that it's designed using a CMS. :)

After a quick glance at the source code for the main page, I would guess that it's an AJAX system - traditionally a mix of PHP, CSS and Java. AJAX, from my experience, is the most reliable way to handle server populated page. ASP is another language which can accomplish this, but in my opinion, not quite as effectively.

[tsunami7]

Actually looking at the website source code myself, it appears that it's using WordPress to do content management. If that's correct, then I need to investigate that a bit more. One thing I find curious though is that this is a website that helps people with an Adobe product (Layersmagazine.com seems to use the same setup), but the WordPress site specifically says not to use Dreamweaver when building pages. I'm guessing they're talking about doing the WYSIWIG approach to pages, cause of all the stuff they throw in there.

I'm just sort of wondering if there's a good CMS system that works well with Dreamweaver and PHP, not that Dreamweaver is all that great a tool when working with PHP, but I sure do like doing the initial design there. Maybe Contribute is the answer, but I haven't really used that.

My overall thing here is that I'm trying to figure out how to use Dreamweaver Template files to build my site, but then integrate some CMS type system into that.

[Jason_The_Adams]

Well if you're willing to use a CMS such as Wordpress, then you really wouldn't need to deal with any of it in Dreamweaver. I've designed Wordpress sites using nothing but Photoshop, the available scripts and plug-ins, and Notepad++. :) Incidentally, Wordpress uses a form of AJAX - it's the development style, not the developer's title.

But to try and answer your question, I'm really not terribly confident in my answer, as I'm simply not much of a fan of Dreamweaver - my loss, probably, but I tend to stick with Flash, or for AJAX style development, Notepad++. But integrating a pre-developed CMS into your own design would take quite a bit of work in any case - the simplest, solution I could think of would be to use frames, but unless done brilliantly, frames irritate me from a design perspective as they look shoddy.

So, depending on what CMS you're looking to integrate, you'd simply have to familiarize yourself to death with how that particular CMS worked, and how you could integrate it without losing its functionality (and not spending more time integrating it than would take to just have designed it yourself ;)).

Hope this helps. :)

[tsunami7]

Thanks Jason.

Unfortunately that's kinda the conclusion that I've been reaching. Again, I haven't looked at Word Press much, but I think I'll take a look at it. I'll probably start with Joomla though, cause there seems to be a reasonably good tutorial to get up and running with.

I really would like to be able to design a site for a client, and not have to hear from them every time they want some minor text changes. I don't see telling them they have to buy Contribute either, unless I include that in the cost, and just give them a copy. ;)

I was just really hoping that there was a good way to integrate the Dreamweaver template files. For straight up HTML they ROCK. I also like using some of the Spry stuff, although I have to admit I end up having to clean up the garbage JavaScript that Dreamweaver sticks in there when you do that. Of course, nobody writes scripts to my satisfaction, since I come from a C++, C# world, so I always end up doing that if I want easy to read/maintainable code.

Thanks again

[Jason_The_Adams]

You're welcome. :)

Well, depending on how much development work you do, it might be worth your time to develop a dynamic CMS environment of your own - either from scratch or one that simply integrates dynamically with a CMS framework that you would prefer. Dynamic, reusable code than can be used from project to project is always the way to go, and even if you don't have one or a few files that instantly integrate an entire posting system into a design, you can at least develop dynamic code which deals with the database and whatnot.

Little extra work now can save a lot of work later. ;)

Hope this helps. :)

[tsunami7]

Yeah, I've kinda been working on that. I've set up a defaults folder where I store folder layout, scripts, css, etc. Maybe a CMS systems is next. :) I think I'll try out the packaged ones first, see where I like them, and where I think they're deficient, and figure out where to go from there.

Peace

[print2web]

Hey if anyone would rather leave the web development to someone else and just supply a photoshop file then go check out ---- we just launched it... it's our own custom proven CMS and we have been selling the end products retail to the public for between 10 and 20 thousand dollars for years. If you supply us with the artwork we do it for you wholesale for under $2000!

Pretty cool concept check it out.

[mitzs]

Hey if anyone would rather leave the web development to someone else and just supply a photoshop file then go check out ---- we just launched it... it's our own custom proven CMS and we have been selling the end products retail to the public for between 10 and 20 thousand dollars for years. If you supply us with the artwork we do it for you wholesale for under $2000!

Pretty cool concept check it out.

Print I removed your links. If you would like to advertise here please contact kelby media for price quotes. To do other wise will be considered spam and will be treated as such. Thank you.
Mitzs
Planet Photoshop Mod.