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I need some advice

Discussion in 'HTML & Website Design' started by Ressko, Mar 13, 2015.

  1. #1
    Ok so im looking for some advice for what path I should take in web design. I apologize in advance for the somewhat long post.

    So i'm 15 and I got into web design about 2 years ago. I created my first website for a project that I was working on at the time. Then I did a small website for a friends business (this was paid work). Up until now I have been using wordpress with existing themes and plugins (I should note I can use php and HTMl/CSS when needed, I am not a beginner but I am not advanced, I have learnt what I needed to at the time).

    I started doing "freelance web design" about a year ago, again using wordpress and existing themes. I feel that to progress further I need to stop using existing themes and either create my own themes for a CMS (either wordpress or drupal) or build websites totally from scratch. I have watched a couple of Lynda.com courses on wordpress themes and I dont think its really worth learning. I see wordpress theme creation as more as something to sell, selling the themes to others I mean.

    I am stuck at what path to go down, whether it be developing wordpress themes to use for clients, designing from scratch using HTML, CSS and JS or to use Dreamweaver or something.

    What I am looking for is maybe other freelancers on here telling me how they got to where they are now, and how they create websites for clients.

    Im sorry if this is hard to understand, im a poor writer.

    Any response it appreciated.
     
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    Ressko, Mar 13, 2015 IP
  2. themes4all

    themes4all Well-Known Member

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    #2
    Hello there,

    To create a Wordpress Themes (including Developement) from Scratch, you have to start by understanding the Wordpress Structure..etc All what i can advice is reading this Article : Link
    This one Respond to all your questions and give you all the needed steps...

    Goodluck
     
    themes4all, Mar 13, 2015 IP
  3. PoPSiCLe

    PoPSiCLe Illustrious Member

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    #3
    Depends on what you want to do. If you want to be able to take on other projects / more advanced projects, learning to code from scratch is a must. WordPress and theme-making is a good way to learn just that - WordPress and theme-making - which, of course, might be interesting to a client who wants something truly unique, but still use WordPress. However, regardless of what you end up doing, a good skill set is always paramount - hence you should at least try making a decent site from scratch - personally, I prefer using a standard text-editor - Sublime, Notepad++, or something similar. Others might prefer IDEs, but I've never seen the point. One thing for sure - don't use Dreamweaver.
     
    PoPSiCLe, Mar 13, 2015 IP
  4. Ressko

    Ressko Greenhorn

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    #4
    Thanks for the responses.

    @PoPSiCLe, most clients will want something unique and of I want unique work for my portfolio. I guess I will just bear looking into wordpress themes again. How come dreamweaver is so bad? you still have to know HTML/CSS, it just makes it quicker to change stuff IMO.
     
    Ressko, Mar 13, 2015 IP
  5. PoPSiCLe

    PoPSiCLe Illustrious Member

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    #5
    Dreamweaver is a bloated piece of crap software, which previews in an outdated browser-clone, which doesn't reflect any of today's modern browsers, as far as I know, and also doesn't do much in the CSS3 area. There's really no need - any decent text-editor works just as well, and a local server / local browsers so you can test in the most common ones (IE, Opera, Chrome and Firefox) - Safari for Windows is extremely outdated, so no way to test stuff properly there unless you have a mac (or utilize external services which provides different browsers for testing).
    Dreamweaver is, to me, proof that the user is NOT professional - it's a crutch, and not a very good one.
     
    PoPSiCLe, Mar 15, 2015 IP
  6. Ressko

    Ressko Greenhorn

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    #6
    Well put. Thank you :)
    I had another look into wordpress theme dev and im finding it quite tricky. I think im going to practice HTML/CSS more before I look again. CSS is probably the language im worst at so im going to focus on that. Thanks for the advice :)
     
    Ressko, Mar 15, 2015 IP
  7. #7
    Turdpress is as big a steaming pile as Dreamweaver.

    Though PoPSiCle is a bit off, DW does now handle everything most modern browsers do in that newer versions are now based on Webkit, the engine under Safari and that was under Chrome until they forked off their own version called Blink.

    That said, It is a steaming pile. As a dearly departed friend of mine used to say, "the only thing about Dreamweaver that can be considered professional grade tools are the people promoting it's use". If you use the preview pane as a WYSIWYG editor it vomits up non-semantic markup. If you try to use the preview pane just to preview it doesn't even render like the browsers it's allegedly based on (Opera for old ones, Safari for newer versions) and you STILL should be testing in the actual browsers. If you use the template management it pisses all over the markup with garbage code bloat comments that could be tripping rendering bugs. (Yes, poorly placed comments -- things browsers are supposed to ignore -- can trip rendering bugs. It's and IE and FF thing). The "wizards" and anything in it that automates doing for you are typically stunning examples of developer ineptitude; see the stupid malfing halfwit "mm_" scripttardery 90%+ of which is doing CSS' job. Pretty much the only thing you can learn from Dreamweaver -- or pretty much any other 'tool' like it -- is how NOT to build a website.

    The only way -- in theory -- to build a website with DW and not have it be total trash is to restrict yourself to just using it's code view and NOT using ANY of it's actual features; in which case congratulations you're wasting megabytes of disk space and hundreds of dollars on an overglorified notepad replacement. There are plenty of perfectly good flat text code editors out there for FREE, making DW nothing more than nube predating scam artist bull.

    Also, I said "in theory" for a reason. I've never actually seen a website where DW was involved where it didn't end up pissing on it in one way or another.

    Much like Turdpress... or frameworks like jQueery and bootcrap.

    My advice, make sure you know "semantic markup", the sick euphemism for "using HTML properly" that we use so as not to offend the halfwit dumbasses still vomiting up HTML 3.2 and slapping either 4 tranny of 5 lip-service on it. Use tags for what they mean, NOT what they look like. Be sure you are working CONTENT FIRST since CONTENT is what people visit websites for. Make certain you have a grasp of progressive enhancement so your pages gracefully degrade, and that you have separation of presentation from content so when it comes time to have different media targets and responsive layout you haven't painted yourself into a corner.

    Good practices; learn them, and ignore all the dumbass shortcuts because they most always result in a rubbish product that is more work in the long run... or even in the short term. It's why when people say things like LESS/SASS makes it "easier" or bootcrap makes it "easier" or jqueery makes it "easier" or putting the presentation in the markup is "easier" I end up posting this picture:
    [​IMG]

    ... as I'll never grasp how more complex tools that result in having more code before you even START the project and writing more code not even counting the tools against that total is "easier". Particularly when they piss all over the markup in the process... but then where most people use 50k of HTML I use a third that.
     
    deathshadow, Mar 16, 2015 IP
  8. Ressko

    Ressko Greenhorn

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    #8
    You're awesome haha. Could you elaborate on Wordpress more? And do you think there are any useful CMSs?
     
    Ressko, Mar 16, 2015 IP
  9. deathshadow

    deathshadow Acclaimed Member

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    #9
    Turdpress is flawed on so many levels, I fail to grasp how people can use it by choice other than an utter and complete ignorance of what a website is, or an unwillingness to learn to do anything properly. AT BEST, it's a sleazy shortcut, at worse it pisses all over everything it gets near at most every level.

    It is a cute toy for making a blog for grandma or one of those mouth-breathers from the TLDR Twitter generation; the moment you try to use it for more than that it falls apart miserably. That why most businesses that try to use it for their sites have bloated slow loading painful to use disasters that cost them more to maintain than it would ever draw in for customer base; about the only time such sites tend to last in the long run is when they are for conventional brick and mortar businesses for whom a web presence is more afterthought than marketing tool... the laugh being most of the marketers out there tricking people into crapping out websites that way are the real tools.

    From strictly a front end point of view, it tries to shove bad markup down your throat. Worse, the outright idiotic bloated pointless code bloat garbage most "mods/extensions/plugins/whateverTheyWantToCallThemThisWeek" saddle you with makes the main code-base look good... You then end up with templates that are laundry lists of how not to write a website.

    For example (I'll just go to a random off the shelf template from their site), as I often say...

    <body class="home blog">
            <section id = "container" class = "cf">
                <header class = "site-header">
    				<div class = "header-search">
    					<form role="search" method="get" class="search-form" action="https://wp-themes.com/">
    				<label>
    					<span class="screen-reader-text">Search for:</span>
    					<input type="search" class="search-field" placeholder="Search &hellip;" value="" name="s" title="Search for:" />
    				</label>
    				<input type="submit" class="search-submit" value="Search" />
    			</form>				</div>
                    <hgroup>
                        <h1 class = "site-title"><a href = "https://wp-themes.com/">Theme Preview</a></h1>
                        <h2 class = "site-description">Previewing Another WordPress Blog</h2>
                    </hgroup>
                                    </header>
                <nav class = "primary-navigation cf">
                        <div class="primary-navigation"><ul><li class="page_item page-item-2"><a href="https://wp-themes.com/?page_id=2">About</a></li><li class="page_item page-item-46 page_item_has_children"><a href="https://wp-themes.com/?page_id=46">Parent Page</a><ul class='children'><li class="page_item page-item-49"><a href="https://wp-themes.com/?page_id=49">Sub-page</a></li></ul></li></ul></div>
    			</nav>                            <section id = "site-content">
            <article class = "" id = "post-19" class="post-19 post type-post status-publish format-standard hentry category-uncategorized tag-boat tag-lake">
                <h1 class = "entry-title"><a href = "https://wp-themes.com/?p=19">Worth A Thousand Words</a></h1>   
    				<div class = "metadata-posted-on"><small><i class="fa fa-calendar"></i>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a href="https://wp-themes.com/?p=19" title="4:33 am" rel="bookmark"><span class="entry-date">10/17/2008</span></a> &nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i class = "fa fa-user"></i>&nbsp;&nbsp;<a class="url fn n" href="https://wp-themes.com/?author=1" title="View all posts by Theme Admin">Theme Admin</a>&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp; <i class = "fa fa-comments"></i>&nbsp;&nbsp;Comments Closed</small></div>
    Code (markup):
    If you don't know how many things are wrong with the above code... well....do the world a favor, back the **** away from the keyboard, and don't come back until you've learned how to use HTML properly!!! Endless pointless classes for nothing, endless pointless DIV and HTML 5 structural BS code bloat, run-on sentences masquerading as semantics, tags that never actually existed in production versions of HTML, utter ignorance of what numbered headings are and/or are for, absolute URI's everywhere, invalid/incomplete forms... That's basically 2k of markup doing less than 1k's job!

    ... and what it vomits up for markup that you can't even control from the "template engine" is so terrifyingly bad, you have people adding post-processing to the output just to strip it out rather than fixing the underying code?!? Tell me another one Josephine.

    That it even HAS a template engine sitting atop PHP which is itself a template engine is some seriously jacktarded herpafreakingderp territory. If you can use to learn things like Smarty, get off your ass and learn how to use PHP the exact same way without the extra "engine" crap and extra layer of pointless idiotic halfwit mouth-breathingly stupid abstraction. If you can learn to use a template system, you can learn PHP in the same time; anyone making front-end code who cannot master something so simple probably has no damned business writing the HTML either!

    ... and that's just what it and most people working with it vomit up for HTML and have the giant pair of donkey brass to call a website. Under the hood turdpress is more "insecure by design" than the language it's written in. (which when we're talking PHP is an accomplishment of monumental proportions!)

    Simple fact is Wordpress basically has "one ring protection". There's an outer wall, once you breach that wall ANYTHING in the entire system is fair game. The problem with that comes about with the multiple entry vectors that make "modding" it so "easy". Easy and security generally don't run hand in hand unless it's down the garden path to epic fail. All those possible entry points are just holes in the outer perimeter... and with the majority of mods/extensions/plugins/whatever for wordpress, quite often those holes are left unguarded either due to developer ignorance or ineptitude.

    That's a hefty part of why if you go through all the security reports for wordpress, the majority of them post 2008 are SAID TO BE related to plugins, not the base system. (though there are plenty of those too!)

    http://www.cvedetails.com/product/4096/Wordpress-Wordpress.html?vendor_id=2337

    BUT... that's not exactly accurate. Simple fact is under the hood damned near everything is exposed in global scope, there are so many entry vectors that are directly callable you'd have to double the code-base size just to guard those holes, and it's STILL built on outdated/outmoded methodologies (like mysql_ functions). Laughably the plugins to make it use other engines are basically wrappers that don't actually fix the reasons we've been told to STOP using mysql_ for almost a decade, defeating the entire point of even bothering.

    Things like leaving the connection open in global scope, or blindly pasting values into query strings instead of using prepared queries.

    One of the BIGGEST herpafreakingderps in the entire system is that not only is the database connection itself global in scope, the connection INFO (username, PW, localhost) are exposed to all code in DEFINE. Defines are constant, global, and inviolate -- once set you can't unset them. Putting the security information into a non-destroyable fixed global scope is like not even bothering to hang a picture over your wall safe, and then putting a sticky note with the combination on it on the front. You better hope that you've got one strong front door, strong back door, and bars over the windows... and even then hope nobody comes along and says "did you know inner walls are usually easier to get through than locked doors?".

    "Every decent punk has a bulletproof door. But people forget walls are just plaster." - Micheal Westin

    Basically, IF you can break through that outer wall, the mayor is standing there ready to hand you the keys to the city once inside... that's why WHEN exploits occur in Wordpress, they are disastrous in impact; to the point that quite often the only way to fix things is to nuke the site from orbit. It's the only way to be sure.

    Really it earned that Pwnie for M4ss 0wnage back in 2008 for a reason; it was truly well deserved.

    There's a reason I consider most people who use Wordpress by choice to be mouth-breathing halfwits who probably shouldn't have websites in the first place. It's ridiculously vulnerable, bloated, and in most cases NOT suited to doing what people want to use it for; to even make anything of value with it you'll spend so much time learning it's internals and bending it over the jail-cell toilet to make it your *****, it would be less effort to just build from scratch.

    Like many off-the-shelf solutions any time saved as a starting point is wasted turning it into something practical, sustainable, maintainable and just generally deceent enough to not be "just another cookie-cutter disaster".

    Depends on what you mean by that. I'm a firm believer in solutions that fit the problem; off the shelf solutions rarely do. In that way most stock CMS systems (Wordpress, Joomla, etc) are as useless as dumbass nube predation like Wix or Blogger. Usually that's why most sites built with such tools are relegated to "also ran" status with far lower traffic and practicality than the content should be making possible.

    ... and also why such systems are the bread and butter of marketing scam artists who cookie-cutter out copypasta stolen unoriginal content then try to use SEO snake oil and gee ain't it neat art and scripttardery to dump as much shellac as they can on the pile. The end result is still bug **** on dog ****.

    Taking a system designed for someone else's content, then trying to shoe-horn your content into it quite often ends up being the equivalent of digging through the toolbox for that 5 pound lump hammer so you can pound that square peg into the round hole. It's the same problem you see with off the shelf templates or the outright stupidity of dicking around drawing goofy pictures in photoshop and having the giant pair of donkey brass to call oneself a "designer" -- when it comes time to add content you end up having to design the content to the layout instead of the other way around -- and no matter what the art faygelahs, scripttards and nube predating scam artists at places like ThemeForest or TemplateMonster will try to sell you, that's a back-assward plan and a hefty chunk of why sites built that way are usually little more than "also ran" status.

    Mind you, you can make some really good money being the nube predating scam artists selling people stock turdpress installs with off the shelf templates if you "take the money and run". Just don't plan on said sites ever actually being successful or anything more than glorified money pits; and don't exactly expect to have a great reputation come from it either. You don't mind being a sleazeball **** in desperate need of a courtesy flush, go right ahead and use that methodology. They say money can soothe a guilty conscience -- I must be mentally defective on that as it doesn't work that way for me.

    That said you CAN build a good CMS if you have the proper knowledge of HTML, CSS, PHP, SQL and all the other bits needed to build things, but do so from a "content FIRST" perspective and build to the needs of the content and visitors to the sites, not the ego of the artsy fartsy designers and "gee ain't it neat" scripttards. Avoid off the shelf solutions like "frameworks" be it PHP, HTML/CSS or JS as they are fat bloated train wrecks that create MORE work not less if you care in the least about usability for your visitors and overall security, and generally just cost more to host in the long term.

    You'd be surprised how many people who "get it" in terms of running a website will pony up five to ten grand for a job that your typical "sleaze out a turdpress" site dev would charge $200 for -- but ONLY if it means they can host the next decade on a ten dollar a month VPS instead of dropping a grand a month on GoDaddy type scams and not have to worry about being hacked every month.

    Particularly if they've already tried that route a few times and realized that the previous people they used put a saddle on them and took them for a ride.

    That's a hefty chunk of why I consider a LOT of the stuff being advocated as good practice like jQuery, bootcrap, off the shelf templates and CMS, PHP frameworks like codeignitor, and even a lot of the pointless code bloat crap and re-introduced redundanices in HTML5 to be... well, they're all basically Pirelli's Miracle Elixer.

    Good God what is that awful stench; are we standing near an open trench?
     
    Last edited: Mar 19, 2015
    deathshadow, Mar 19, 2015 IP
  10. Ressko

    Ressko Greenhorn

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    #10
    Haha, your rants make me laugh! I do agree that Wordpress is bloated if used for anything more than grandmas blog. It's a good tool to get started in. I've summarised from your post that websites should be done from scratch. I think the reason that a lot of people go to Wordpress is because it is the easy option. One final question if you don't mind, how do you develop website? From scratch, from framework ect?


    Also general thread update, I have decided to do a web design apprenticeship with a local company. I have an interview next week.
     
    Ressko, Mar 20, 2015 IP