Hello World

Jumping from HTML and PHP to Wordpress

I have had to admit that I am not really interested in learning all there is to learn about PHP, MySQL and all the coding that is involved to be able to make the sites that I make more in line with the current technology.

I have enough trouble making Div containers stay where I put them and preventing their contents from spilling out - which seems to happen a lot.

So here's why I have taken the plunge and have jumped in to working with Wordpress...

The main reason I can think of why I don't like coding my own websites is I hate Javascript. You can't really do a lot without it. You can't centre an image on the screen using CSS and HTML as neither knows what the environment is, so you can do your best to make an image pop up in a place that doesn't appear too arbitrary, but if you're like me, you know that the moment the web page is resized, all the hard work you've put in is going to go out of the window.

CSS3 contains shedloads of brilliant stuff, but there's nothing cross portable about it without writing the code four times over to incorporate all the different browsers, mobiles, tablets and anything else you can think of.

I've been able to find some pretty wonderful code out there to work with, but the one thing that sticks in my craw is the fact that with the exception of some of the commands for Internet Explorer, all the others are exactly the same. Yet here we are writing exactly the same line of code in our CSS file and adding -webkit-, -o-, -ie-  or -moz- in front.

For goodness sake, if the commands are the same, why are we doing this?

So why Wordpress?

Firstly, Wordpress is free. That's always a bonus.

A few years ago, I splashed out on an Adobe suite, which included Photoshop CS4, Illustrator and Dreamweaver - amongst others.

Literally, as soon as I bought it, it was out of date. Suddenly, I discovered that my version of Dreamweaver was woefully under powered as it didn't know anything about CSS3 - which everyone wanted - and therefore, wouldn't ever display correctly if I used Flex commands, Text-Shadow or Box-Shadow to name but a few.

I took the plunge and went for Microsoft's WebMatrix freebie.

This was amazing, until I learnt that it didn't like Flex either and a few other CSS3 niceties. You could run the code and it would work, but the editor didn't agree, so you always had a fistful of errors listed - even though they weren't errors at all.

Have MS updated it?

Not at all.

I have basically reached the end of what I know and what I can get my head round with HTML and PHP, CSS3 and everything that encircles it.

Yet I am being asked more and more to design and develop sites where the bells and whistles are all so necessary. Things like contact forms so you can have people message you from your website and not have to put your email address on view, opening you up to untold quantities of spam. Image controls for sliders and carousels. Without JS, getting anything to work the way you would like is a nightmare.

Wordpress appears to have everything I need and the majority of it is free.

So far, what I have found using it for my first site (a test site I have created for a customer, which I will recreate on her web space if she likes it), it's clean and reasonably simple to work and if, like me, you have some CSS3/HTML knowledge, you can add in a few niceties that don't come with the theme you choose.

Next time...

Choosing a theme and or plugins