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Mar 27, 2011 Web and Product Reviews, Website Addons and Upgrades, Website Coding
Since the days when open source CMS applications began coming out, I’ve always been a bit unsure about which ones were the best to use for what. At the beginning, none of them were really very good, but now they have evolved and improved so much, there are now too many good ones to choose from.
Drupal versus Joomla
For the last few years, two of the most popular CMS platforms have been Drupal and Joomla. You can even see many job offers today looking for people who can develop using Drupal or Joomla. They are definitely among the most popular, that’s for sure. However, I don’t like either of them, and find their admin systems, especially, to be clumsy and overly-complicated.
Website Baker
My first favorite CMS was one that was not well-known at all when I first started using it. After trying out all the most popular ones, though, and then giving Website Baker a try, I was hooked instantly. It was so much simpler than all the others, and I found, as a programmer, that I could do pretty well anything I wanted with it to create custom functions and modules for customers. Best of all, though, was the admin system. It was so simple, almost anyone could just log in and start editing pages instantly. It also had the ability to allow an editor to use multiple menus and edit multiple sections on a page right out of the box.
Unfortunately, Website Baker is not being supported very well these days, and production and updates are few and far between. I still like it a lot, but it’s now not my only recommendation for a CMS.
Another thing that Website Baker can’t do is enable you to add a blog to your site. Well, there is a simple addon for allowing people to comment on pages, but it’s as simple as it comes. Instead of using Website Baker for the blog part of the site, I would use Website Baker for the CMS, and then just used WordPress for the blog part of the site. That required two different logins into two different administration areas, so it was a bit inconvenient to have that kind of setup.
WordPress - the best solution for a blog and CMS
In the last year, I’ve been doing a lot of freelance work for a local company. When I first started, they told me that they wanted to create CMS sites for customers using WordPress. At first, I didn’t think that was going to work out so well, but when I started to learn more about WordPress and how it could be used as a CMS, I gradually started to convert. As a programmer, and by adapting the skills I learned while working with Website Baker, I was able to become quite proficient at using WordPress in a short amount of time.
The best thing about WordPress is that it can be used to both manage your blog and manage your website content. Of course, since it was first developed as a blog platform, that is where its main strength lies (WordPress is by far the most used blogging platform), but its CMS features are also good for doing what most people need done.
To learn more about WordPress, I recommend checking out the offical Wordpress site at http://www.wordpress.org.
In my next article, I’m going to share some information about some of the things I do when I’m developing a WordPress site. Stay tuned.
Recent Entries
Nov 24, 2010 General, Web and Product Reviews
We just got word from Hostgator that they are going to be offering their best deals of all time for one day only on Black Friday. Beginning at 12:00 am CST on Friday (right after the stroke of midnight on Thursday night), you will be able to purchase any of their hosting plans at unbeatable savings. This is how it’s going to work:
- 50% OFF EVERYTHING From 12:00AM CST – 5AM CST
- 80% OFF EVERYTHING From 5AM – 9AM CST WHILE SUPPLIES LAST (first come, first receive; so definitely don’t miss out!)
- From 9AM – 11:59PM CST OR after 80% OFF accounts have sold out, they will continue to offer 50% OFF EVERYTHING
For more information about this SUPER sale, go to Hosting Discount Codes to read the full article.
Sep 21, 2010 Web and Product Reviews
For the last couple of years, I have been using Enom for purchasing most of my domain names. They are one of the bigger domain registrars out there, and they have a powerful set of tools for managing your domains.
One of the things I don’t like about Enom, though, is that their prices are a bit higher than some of the other options out there. For example, they are charging $21.97/year for a .ca domain name, which is one of the biggest rip-offs I’ve ever seen. Their .com prices are much better at $9.74 per year, but I’ve still seen some better prices.
Of course, I wasn’t using Enom to purchase .ca domain names. Only a crazy or ignorant person would do something like that. Instead, for my .ca domain names, I was using a local company called Netnation. They are selling .ca domain names for $11.95.
Well, recently, I just went through the process of purchasing another .ca domain name through Netnation, and I realized that it’s just more trouble than it’s worth. The problem for me is that they don’t accept payments through Paypal. Since I don’t have a credit card, that leaves me with just one option: cheque. The worst thing about paying them by cheque is that, even though you have gone through the process of purchasing a domain name through their shopping cart, you still have to wait for your cheque to make it to their office and then clear before the domain is actually purchased and you can use it as your own.
This week, I spent a few hours searching for the perfect company that I could use to purchase all of my domains — both .ca and .com — in place of Enom and Netnation. As a result, I believe I’ve finally found the best option for me: Netfirms.
One of the best features about Netfirms for me is that you can do all your payments through Paypal, which is about as convenient as it gets. Another thing I like is that both their .com and .ca domain names are just $9.95/year. To make things even better, at the moment, they are offering their .com domains at a 30% discount, so you can get one for $6.95! Now you’re talking!
So I am now in the process of switching to Netfirms to manage all my domain names. If you are interested in purchasing domain names at the best prices, as well, then I recommend you check them out. Just click on the banner below to see the great deals for yourself.
Sep 18, 2010 Web and Product Reviews
The competition is as fierce as ever in the world of cheap Web hosting plans, and more and more hosting companies are entering the fray all the time.
Because of the competition, we are seeing prices as low as $3.50/month for unlimited features, and as a result, it’s now possible for almost anyone to afford their own personal hosting package.
With so many companies offering the same kinds of features for the same price, it’s not an easy task to decide which one to sign up with. Personally, I think nobody is the best, and many are good choices, but in this article, I’m going to recommend a company called HostUpon.
HostUpon, like many of the other big shared hosting companies, has the usual features:
- UNLIMITED disk space
- UNLIMITED bandwidth
- UNLIMITED MySQL databases
- Free domain name for life
- 30-day money back guarantee
Some features they have available, and that other hosting companies don’t typically have are:
- SSL secure server
- A variety of hosting plan packages including Virtual Private Servers and Dedicated Servers.
Another reason why I would like to recommend HostUpon is because we have a exclusive coupon code that can help you get an extra $30 discount. That’s an extra 30 dollars off any hosting plan that you are signing up for. And the coupon code is…
hdcodes
Just go to HostUpon, read through their features, and sign up if you like what you see. Then, while you are going through the signup process, just enter the above code to receive your $30 discount. It’s as simple as that.
May 7, 2010 Web and Product Reviews
Not too long ago, I discovered something really interesting about HostPapa. They have two different websites, HostPapa.ca and HostPapa.com, and there are some curious differences between them.
HostPapa.ca is aimed at Canadian customers, so it has the Canadian flag at the top of the site, while HostPapa.com is aimed at American customers, and thus has an American flag at the top. However, there are a few more differences that everyone should know about.
In both cases, it is still a Canadian company, and the data centres (or ‘centers’ as it is spelled in America) are located in Toronto just the same, but the price difference between the two sites is quite a lot. If you purchase a 3-year hosting plan from the Canadian site, it is $5.95/month. That is a pretty good price by itself, of course. However, if you purchase the same plan from the American site, it is just $4.95/month. That’s a difference of $36 over 3 years!
One other difference worth mentioning is that you are not able to select a Canadian (.ca) domain name if you order from the American site. Your free domain will have to be a .com, .net, .org, .biz, or .info. So if you want a .ca domain name, you will have to order from the Canadian site and pay $36 more for a 3-year plan. Is it worth it? I think not.
So if you want to purchase a hosting plan from HostPapa, my advice to you is to sign up through the American site, HostPapa.com, which isn’t really an American site, but actually a Canadian hosting company’s website aimed at American buyers. You can purchase it through there just the same and save $36 in the process, especially in these times when the Canadian and American dollars are dancing around parity.
Canadian aimed site
To sign up through the “for Canadian customers” site and pay more just to get a .ca domain name that you can buy yourself for less than 1/3 the price, click here.
American aimed site
To sign up through the “for American customers” site and get the best hosting deal possible from HostPapa, click here.
The choice is yours.
Update: Hostpapa has now increased their price for Americans to $5.95 to match the Canadian price. I should have known that instead of making them both $4.95, they would choose the higher price for both. They are also lying about the new price on the American-aimed site. They say that their regular price is $6.95 and they are now offering their hosting at $5.95. In fact, it used to say the regular price was $5.95, and they were offering it as $4.95. Very dishonest.
Disclaimer: The above banners are hosted offsite and may change at any time. At the time of this writing, all prices and details stated above were indeed true.
Apr 23, 2010 Website Addons and Upgrades, Website Coding
Here is a challenge that has stumped many users of SlideShowPro over the years, and it’s something that I have managed to figure out just recently with the help of a lot of research and trial and error.
The situation is this: you or your client wants his slideshow to appear in a browser window and take up 100% of the width and 100% of the height of the browser window, no matter what size, and have the slideshow resize in real time as the browser window is dragged and resized. Read More..
Apr 15, 2010 Web and Product Reviews
I have another website for featuring top-10 Web hosting companies, discount coupon codes, and hot deals called Hosting Discount Codes, and I’ve been spending quite a lot of time researching hosting companies and other Web deals for it. As a result of my work and research, I’m now able to recommend one of these hosting companies as the one that gives you the absolute best value for your buck. That company is called iPage. Read More..
Mar 25, 2010 Web and Product Reviews, Website Coding
For anyone who has been coding in HTML for any length of time, one of the biggest challenges has always been with trying to get a website to look the same in different browsers.
There was a time when you could program your site to work with Internet Explorer, and not have to worry too much about the other browsers; though, if you wanted to be considered as a professional company, you would have to try to make it look good in Netscape, too. Those were the only two relevant browsers. Read More..
Dec 16, 2009 General, Website Coding
Working as a freelance website coder for 10 years now, I’ve long gotten used to relying on the Internet to have my questions answered and problems solved.
Now, I’m pretty strict to myself at trying to do my code properly. For instance, I would never add in a tag attribute without putting quotes around the attribute (i.e., width=”20″ instead of width = 20). That was one of the first things I learned in college when I started studying HTML — luckily I had a C programmer for a teacher who taught me high standards for coding. Read More..
Nov 24, 2009 General, Website Addons and Upgrades
Recently, a customer asked me how much it would cost him to get a new design for his site. There was a time when I would have told him that it would probably cost him at least $1,500 to get a decent design from a reputable Web or graphic design company. But now things are much different, and there are many cheaper options out there.
When I first decided that I wanted to go with the new company/website name, Site Fixers, one of the first things I thought about was how I could get a pretty decent looking website up there that would give the appearance of quality without the high cost that usually goes with it. Then I remembered seeing banners in the midst of my Internet searches that were advertising cheap templates, so I decided to look into it some more. Read More..