How are the BIG websites designed? Unique design for the same page? Or a script?

Does anyone know how the big websites are designed? For example this one "http://www.thetechzone.com/news.php" when someone writes a post or something do they have to make a new file in their directory and call it "example" then add a prewritten code and type in their content? Or is it like a wordpress blog, where you simply type the content in...
Anyway, what are you suppossed to know to make those 'big websites' I know css, html and a little php.

 

Almost all would use some type of CMS.

 

Where can I get one or make one? Thanks.

 

Simple, yet powerful = http://wordpress.org/
Other choices include Drupal (great for advanced projects), and...
...many people like Joomla, but I think it's very over-rated.
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Note: Your web host probably has an installer called Fantastico, this makes it easy to experiment with many different types of sites.

Good luck

/avoid PHP Nuke unless you want hackers to rule your future.

 

You should try wordpress (it is a blogging tool but can be used as a CMS as well). Or you could look into Drupal, or Joomla. Just google for them and you will find their homepages where you can download the scripts. There are lots of users of these scripts and if you get into trouble ask on the forum and people might help.

 

I've been tinkering with WordPress as a content management system, and while it does have its advantages, it also has its quirks as well (not to mention pure rubbish for PHP code and inappropriate uses of Ajax when it's not even necessary). I'm also thinking of giving Joomla a try as well for one of my sites, but I've heard from my hosting provider that you can only use GPL'd software with it, which could be a deal-breaker for many projects I may want to use it on if it's true.

Of course the decision is up to you, and as always your mileage may vary.

 

Yes what they are using is a CMS - Content Management System of some sort...
As mentioned WordPress is a commonly used one which i've just installed. This will create the page automatically without you having to do anything if somebody else or yourself writes a post. The code will do all the had work for you it's really simple. And as you know CSS already you can change the design to your needs or use install a template.

 

I know about wordpress lol *points to sig*
I just downloaded joomla I'll check it out.
Thanks.

 

CMS seems the way most of the big guns go.

I've been playing with Wordpress as a CMS as well, and it works fine for me with smaller sites. For my bigger sites I'm now starting to play with Drupal, and even though it has a somewhat steep learning curve, it's proving to be very powerful and versatile for a big site. I am working on a site that will have a massive amount of content in it, and I know a CMS is the best way to go for ease of adding a content, but I am SO SO tempted to just use HTML/CSS and PHP includes. But then that might be a problem in the future for someone who takes it over, so I'm sticking with Drupal for now. There's also ModX, but I haven't had too much luck with it.

 

What about a website that lets users provide content? What should I use?

 

If you want users to provide content then a CMS is definitely the way to go. A lot of people will suggest Joomla, but I would go with Drupal. There are a lot of other CMSs, just google and see what you find. Also, you can test drive a lot of them at http://opensourcecms.com and see which one you prefer.

 

If you like to learn things, and want to master something awesome, I'd suggest Drupal.
If you're looking for something "simple to use" (which can also be a real nightmare at times), then stick with Joomla.

 

Cool, I'll get drupal thank you.
I've got some ideas for websites don't know whether to apply them or not...

 

When you're building websites sometimes it's trial and error to figure out what tools to use. Some of my sites I use plain HTML/CSS, others I use wordpress (even non-blog ones), other blogs I use b2evolution, others I use Drupal, which I'm still learning, and others I go for custom PHP/MySQL solutions.

As you go on I think you'll get to see what model works best for what website.

Drupal has pretty good documentation, and then there are some great tutorials and websites out there. One of my favorites if you're just starting out with Drupal is the youtube tutorial by drupaldude. It will have you setting up your first drupal site in minutes:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Q2aPi9ZEgs

He has more on his website at http://www.drupaldude.com/. You can also find more drupal tutorials on Youtube by searching for drupal.

These are great to get you started, and there's more out there, and you can ask questions and see just how powerful it is.

Good luck!

 

When I make websites I almost always make a custom cms.

Certainly if it's for bands / businesses / people who do the same sort of updates every day, I make it as simple as possible - sort of fill in the boxes -

Headline:
Date:
Article:
Author:

Or whatever whatever. Then they just press add and it sticks it on the site. Obviously there's somewhere to edit / delete the stuff they've added as well. If it's a biggish site, it's pretty easy to create a log in for each user or something similar.

It's just always seemed like a safer way to prevent people who aren't terribly web-savvy from screwing it up. But then I haven't really played with the 'out the box' content management systems.

 

You might want to learn Cold Fusion. It is fast to work with and you could learn to build a contant management system for adding pages and protecting the framework.

 

From my limited understanding of Cold Fusion, aren't the costs a little prohibitive for someone starting out as opposed to using free open source solutions like PHP/MySQL which have a tremendous amount of userbase and community support?

 

hmm cold fusion... it interests me. I might get it. Also there are 'places' where you can get it for free.

 

A great site where you can read reviews on all sorts of CMS's and even try them all out is:
www (dot) opensourcecms (dot) com

I'd recommend:
Wordpress
Joomla
Drupal

But you can see them all for yourself, and they're all free!

 

There is next to no difference in hosting costs between all serverside languages (one possible exception is Lotus Domino servers but then there are so few of them these days).

With all programming languages there are free tools for writing sites, free tools for running them in a testing environment, can use MySQL and being honest, how many people here actually change the code of the PHP engine itself for the fact that the engine is opensource to be of any importance?

The one thing PHP does have is the massive userbase but then this is only of the most importance when you are starting off. Other languages like .Net have much more structured classes and so yes, there are less sites about it but using the free VWDE type in "request." and it will bring up all the subclasses which are predominately logically named with a short explaination of what it does and what format the output is (eg true/ false, integer, string etc).

As stated by others it is a "CMS" system (a term I have come to hate with a passion). How these function in the background can vary greatly between different apps and depending on how it is implimented.

Many are overkill and add a fair amount of unnecessary server load and/ or are not designed to be scaled to server farm setups etc. We have used Dot Net Nuke which is okish but tend to create custom apps which are more closely targeted at the clients requirements rather than fitting the requirements around an off the shelf solution.