Mobile-friendly website

[BJG145]

So, band member buys new mobile and makes a fuss because band website looks terrible. Not surprising since it was thrown together by amateurs in Dreamweaver before mobile phones were invented.

I'm Googling around the subject and seeing a lot of stuff about WordPress. I've never used it before; is this a sensible way to go...? Would rebuilding this fairly basic website in WP make it mobile-friendly and solve this problem in the easiest way...?

[muzines]

You either use a system that has responsive design built into it (Wordpress, Squarespace etc), or you roll it yourself.

If you're not a web nerd, it's easier to use a system where someone else has done this for you.

It really depends on what your requirements are. All of these things can be tried out, so I'd suggest picking one or two that look fitting and start to migrate your content to build a little test site and see how it goes - then decide from there...

[BJG145]

OK! Thanks Desmond...

[Drew Stephenson]

We recently moved from roll-your-own to wordpress. Mobile compatibility was one reason but the other was being able to spread the load.
Writing decent code is hard, moving widgets around is easy.

[BJG145]

Thanks blinddrew. I think we'll go with Wordpress, although it's starting to drive me nuts already, simply getting rid of the %$??&!!ing page title that it puts up by default. After an hour of Googling and trying out different plugins and custom CSS, I'm going to have to admit defeat for today.

[BillB]

I must admit, I sometimes think that HTML and CSS is 'tricky', but I have witnessed various people getting well-lost within the plugins and extensions and widgets and compatibility and updating issues inside Wordpress. It requires it's own kind of hard-earned expertise.

Thus far my inclination has been to find a good (mobile-friendly) HTML/CSS/JavaScript template (lots of free and low-cost online) and then combine the various elements to suit. Admittedly, one comma or bracket out-of-place can break a page, but it isn't too difficult to fix in a decent editor like Notepad++.

There are a number of online sites where you can build a website with drag-drop elements - sort of online Wordpress, I suppose. These are fairly simple, provided they have enough elements to do what you want. Haven't yet found one that persuaded me that the cost and simplicity were sufficiently in its favour to move from using HTML (not coding!... using = copy and paste intelligently).

Having said all of that - Desmond, Muzines is simply fabulous, in so many way (e.g. the search engine). What's the technology behind that?

[muzines]

Having said all of that - Desmond, Muzines is simply fabulous, in so many way (e.g. the search engine). What's the technology behind that?

Well thanks!

I have a long and complicated history with CMS's, which I won't go into now. Every project is different. But given the choice, unless you know something out there absolutely fits your requirement 100% - now, *and* in the future - I vastly prefer to do it myself and build *exactly* what I need, rather than struggle with retrofitting third-party components and realising they can't do what you need - it becomes a nightmare quite quick.

So mu:zines in terms of CMS is 100% custom written from scratch (php with a mySQL database), and I simply add the features I want as I go (which is a luxury!), or as I get to them in my feature/issue tracker.

The website front-end uses a Twitter Bootstrap 3 grid-layout system (https://getbootstrap.com), which gives you a fairly standardised responsive CSS grid layout which will work from web through to mobile. I initially started the front end playing with Blocs (https://blocsapp.com) when I was trying it out to see whether it was worth using, but good as it is I outgrew it pretty quickly, and it's basically all done by hand.

Then I use Jquery for the dynamic stuff, with a few third-party components/plugins, and a lot of custom stuff and tweaking.

There's also quite a lot of custom admin tools that I use to help manage my workflow and make adding and maintaining content as easy and efficient as possible - being able to build *exactly* what I need in this regard is also really important in keeping my sanity - and anything that over time becomes burdensome I often try to improve or automate in whatever way I can. Sometimes the smallest things can make a massive difference...

As for the search stuff, again, it's all just me trying to figure out ways to best present the content and ways that I think are most useful for the site visitor, and there's always room for improvement here. I often look at search queries that people are doing, seeing what the current results are like, and then use some of those things to inform and tweak the search handling to be better in more use cases. But then people make the weirdest search queries sometimes..! But doing search well is, not so much hard*, but complicated, as a straight text search across your text fields is not that useful - my most complicated database queries are in the search handling...

So, probably more detail than you wanted(!) but in short, it's a Bootstrap responsive grid template and JQuery, some Google fonts, a few third-party extras and about 70,000 lines of custom php/JS code...

Doing search *really* well *is* hard though...

[BillB]

So, probably more detail than you wanted(!) but in short, it's a Bootstrap responsive grid template and JQuery, some Google fonts, a few third-party extras and about 70,000 lines of custom php/JS code...

Well, just enough to explain why it is so darn good.

I have not come across those links before:
(https://getbootstrap.com) - looks very interesting, albeit rather more technical than just editing a styled template. Definitely going to investigate further.
(https://blocsapp.com) - could be lovely if I had a Mac. Sensible sort of price too.

thanks Desmond

[Vox Gnus]

Depending on the complexity of your site, you might want to have a look at Mobirise Website Builder. http://mobirise.com

The dynamic layout for desktop, tablet, and mobile devices works very well.

I've used it for several sites, and it's very simple to use. For most purposes, the free version is quite sufficient. But it does have some limitations, so be sure it can do what you need.

[BJG145]

Depending on the complexity of your site, you might want to have a look at Mobirise Website Builder. http://mobirise.com

Thanks...I'll probably check that out as I'm not a web programmer, Squarespace looks simple but relatively expensive, and I find Wordpress starting to get quite annoying quite fast. I don't want to get lost in a labyrinth of installation quirks and plugin version compatibility in a system that seems to have been badly adapted from a blogging tool.

[BJG145]

After calming down a bit and buying an inexpensive but professionally coded theme instead of experimenting with flaky free ones, I'm actually getting into this now...I think it's gonna be OK.

[muzines]

Look on it as an opportunity, rather than a chore...

[ManFromGlass]

Following this thread with interest as the band only has a 1 page site and I’m researching doing it right.
Some guidance from the braintrust here appreciated -

The site I want to build/have built is more of a biographical/historical site rather than a looking for gigs site. I have 43 years of recordings, films, pictures, posters etc etc. I want the site to show some of the highlights over the years but I’m literally stuck with how to proceed. I’ve looked at so many sites my head is about to explode, but I was leaning towards a timeline approach. Clean and easy to navigate. But how do you keep it concise with years of data?
Any basic philosophies appreciated. I’m not great with programming but can usually figure out modifying templates.

[muzines]

It's a data organisation issue, and a design issue.

I'd start by first looking at the data I had, and think about options of how I want to present it. Do I want to put it all up? Do I want one long page, or break it up into sections? What kind of data is it? If it's text and images, do I want to put a few images inline with the text, and have an image gallery for others?

Once you've got a handle on the data you have and how you want to present it, you have a design issue of the best way to lay it out. If you want ideas, you can always have a search around and get inspiration for how other people have achieved something similar.

That should give you some ideas...

[Mike Stranks]

I've been using Weebly for about 9 years now and currently support four sites - with three different levels of features/cost and am possibly soon to be commissioned to take on a fifth.

Although I have a background as a programmer, I'm always mindful that someday/one day someone may have to take over management of a site if I'm no longer available. I have on several occasions been contacted by people who have had a website developed for them that they now couldn't manage at all because it was written in HTML and the person who developed it was no longer available/able/willing to keep it up to date. If you, or someone you know, is good with HTML and you're sure that they'll always be around to support the site then use HTML. If not use one of the major Content Management Systems.

Weebly is not without its issues... page layout is somewhat proscribed and database linkage is a pain. Just before the present nonsense was started I was asked to come up with options for a new local history site. Weebly wouldn't have cut it; I think I'd have gone for Wix in that case.

[BillB]

I think I am right in saying that Weebly / Wix / SquaredSpace all include domain and hosting in the package, which could be an advantage or disadvantage depending on your point of view. My preference is to create and own the domain, then add content to it through HTML, edited templates or something like Mobirise,

I get nervous around solutions where everything is in the hands of one creator/landlord - who is not me. Similar to Mike's concerns about Web designers not necessarily being around in the long term. If a provider's T&Cs, costs or attitudes change unacceptably, I don't want to be tied in to them.

[muzines]

It is a problem.

Squarespace isn't going anywhere and has the best tech/infrastructure and slickness and ease of use. My main problem is that when you build you site on someone elses' platform, you can't take it and go somewhere else - you have to start from more or less scratch to rebuild it elsewhere, should there ever be any reason to move.

At least if you build your own site on standard components (html/css/php/js/mysql/etc), you can *always* pick up your ball and take it to someone else's field. And if someone else builds it for you, make sure that the contents can be edited and updated by you without much technical know how, so at least you can keep the site updated and aren't reliant on someone else to do it.

[wireman]

The website front-end uses a Twitter Bootstrap 3 grid-layout system (https://getbootstrap.com), which gives you a fairly standardised responsive CSS grid layout which will work from web through to mobile. I initially started the front end playing with Blocs (https://blocsapp.com) when I was trying it out to see whether it was worth using, but good as it is I outgrew it pretty quickly, and it's basically all done by hand.

I started with very basic HTML, later I had a site in Dreamweaver but it locks you in. Tried Wordpress but at the time it seemed targeted at a particular sort of page + comment site. You would want the infrastructure updated frequently to pick up security fixes if you use something like Wordpress.

The last time I did a site by hand coding in the brave new world of HTML5 and a view to supporting varying screen sizes I used initializr and GammaGallery but it looks like I have to move to Bootstrap directly now. Whatever you pick you have to decide how much work any customisation will be and keeping up with changes is more difficult if you roll your own.

And a personal note, since I use a big screen with a PC more than a mobile there are some sites I really don't like, the ones with super large fonts and the background images that change as you scroll a page.

[BJG145]

...gradually working my way through this update. So yes, as I was saying...

Wordpress? Brilliant! I love it!

[Mike Stranks]

I think I am right in saying that Weebly / Wix / SquaredSpace all include domain and hosting in the package, which could be an advantage or disadvantage depending on your point of view. My preference is to create and own the domain, then add content to it through HTML, edited templates or something like Mobirise,

I only know about Weebly...

You can include a domain name and hosting in your purchased package, but you don't have to. One of the sites I used to manage had a domain name that was well known and the users didn't wish to change. So the Weebly website was implemented using that domain name.

Other sites have wanted to do the same thing, but owing to the intransigence/unhelpfulness of the domain name registrars we ended up starting over with a new name and everything managed by Weebly.

[Tom S. Ray]

Yes, definitely go for wordpres but the ,org version not .com Wordpress will give you a lot of freedom when it comes to SEO and loads of free plugins. You might spend fair amount of time learning how to put the website up but it's well worth it. All our sites are built on wordpress and mobile-friendly (responsive).

[Tom S. Ray]

Thanks blinddrew. I think we'll go with Wordpress, although it's starting to drive me nuts already, simply getting rid of the %$??&!!ing page title that it puts up by default. After an hour of Googling and trying out different plugins and custom CSS, I'm going to have to admit defeat for today.

Go for paid theme with Elementor page builder. Its simple drag and drop.