Re: Basi question on web page content -- WEB400

The learning curve for Drupal depends on what you want to do.

If you just want to set up a website with the delivered modules and themes, with little or no customization, an experienced IT person should be able to figure out the basics in a few days. It took me a full day to "get it," then a couple of days to explore and discover the available options.

If you want to customize a theme by modifying the underlying code of an existing theme, you're probably looking at a few weeks. Some themes are easier to figure out than others. I've been learning how to tinker with themes for a couple of weeks now. I can get different looks and feels for different web sites (though I would not call myself an expert).

If you want to develop your own modules and themes from scratch, the learning curve increases substantially. You need to learn the Drupal architecture and be experienced with PHP, HTML, and CSS. At least Drupal is written in procedural PHP (not object oriented), which is a little easier for an IBM i developer like me to understand.

Kelly Cookson
Senior Programmer/Analyst
Dot Foods, Inc.
217-773-4486 x12676
www.dotfoods.com

-----Original Message-----
From: web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Joe Pluta
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2010 4:12 PM
To: Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: Re: [WEB400] Basi question on web page content

In general (and take this with a grain of salt, since I spent most of my
time on Java-based packages) the difference between Joomla and Drupal is
that Joomla is easier to get started but tends to hit a wall, while
Drupal has a bigger learning curve but has more features.

That's a huge generalization, but that's the consensus that I've dealt
with. Mike mentioned Wordpress, and while you can do a lot with it,
bear in mind that it's far less customizable than the others.

Joe

There are a plethora of packages (Content Management Systems) that handle situations like this. I haven't had experience with any of those in years, but a couple that I keep reading good things about are Drupal and Joomla. Both are open source packages written in PHP using MySQL as a back end, and they store articles in the database.

-----Original Message-----
From: web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:web400-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of David FOXWELL
Sent: Monday, February 22, 2010 6:59 AM
To: Web Enabling the AS400 / iSeries
Subject: [WEB400] Basi question on web page content

Hi,

I'm still learning the basics, but I have a little site that uses php/mySql and CSS. I can also use XML/XSL. Any text that I put in my pages are hardcoded in the php or html files. Now, someone will be regularly writing new text articles for the site. How do you normally get the text onto the page? I mean, where would it be stored so that a page could be regenerated if the style were to change? I was thinking of copying the text to XML and generating HTML from these pages. But is it usual for the developer to take the text written by the user and edit it in this way?

Also, what is meant exactly by static or dynamic pages? I'm thinking that a dynamic page is one that is generated after the http request, and a static page exists already at that point.

Thanks.