Working with Joomla

My latest project has been learning Joomla, the open-source Content Management System (CMS). As I'm learning it, I am re-creating this Blog in it at my new domain wiswebdesigner.com. The goal is to have it look very similar to this. Not that I think this is such a great design but I wanted to see if I can make it very close. I have gone through most of the videos at lynda.com on the subject so now I just need to put that knowledge to work.

So far I must say I'm not wildly impressed with Joomla. I try to use as little code as possible when creating a site so wading through the extensive Joomla code is tedious and seems to me, not following best practices. I know they are working on using less 'table' code so when the next version is released, we will probably see a huge improvement in that area.

It just takes time to get used to something new and different and I realize I'm working with code written by others. That is never an easy task so I'm sure working with Joomla will become easier as I do more with it.

I have also signed up with a different host provider for a few of my sites, godaddy. They are setup to work with Joomla on their server so I thought I might as well take advantage of that extra help. That means less files to upload for me.

I registered a domain for my daughter Andrea and made a page for her online portfolio. She has some very nice graphic work and it's much easier to post on a web page than try to email to potential employers.

Going forward I will post on my new Blog site and will no longer post here. So check it out every now and then. wiswebdesigner.com

Hey - I'm getting better at this!

It's only been 5 weeks since I last made a post here. Perhaps my goal could be monthly for 2009. I will try, but no promises yet!

Last month Moraine Park's Public Relations department wrote an article about a few of their graduates who have started their own businesses. The article was sent to local newspapers and published on the school's web site. I have linked to it here and under MPTC Quick Links. It was fun participating and sharing my experiences especially now that I am back at MPTC as a call-staff instructor.

I am currently on break from teaching between semesters. I was unable to teach Winterim because we moved two of our children across the country for school. We moved our daughter to Texas where she will attend graduate school to become an acupuncturist and our son to New Jersey to attend Golf Course Turf Management School at Rutgers University. They are both very excited about their new opportunities. And I am very excited because I have an empty house for the first time. It will take me some time to get used to this, but I have a list of projects that will leave me little time to miss anyone.

Spring semester will start up again in two weeks and I look forward to getting back with my students. I'm sure this semester will prove easier than last as it will be the second time around for all of our classes. Perhaps I will have time to post comments here about our classes as I had hoped to do when I first setup this blog.

From Memorial Day to Thanksgiving Day

Yes, it was Memorial Day weekend when I set up this blog. And it has been that long since I posted anything here. It has been a very busy summer and fall. I taught two classes at Moraine Park during the summer and both summer and fall have seen extremely high enrollment in our self-paced classes. That has kept me hopping, helping students and grading projects. We also have switched over to Microsoft Office 2007 which means all new books, curricula and programs to learn. It has been a challenge keeping up, to say the least. But now here we are with only two weeks remaining in the semester. We will all be happy when we have made it through this first semester and after a little break, will be ready to go again in January. The students have been great. They love to learn and some of them get so excited when they learn something new. I've always been the same so it's really fun for me to share in their learning.

A few new web sites this fall have also occupied my time but it has been great to get back into that again. I took a bit of a break over summer and early fall when the school craziness was at its peak. Check out Fay's Fun 'n Learning. Fay's site was the first site I ever did. I used her site for my projects while going to school. We decided after 8 years, it was time for a facelift. Fay and I are both very pleased with the results. When I first made her site, she did not have a store. She was only doing home parties back then. But now she has this big, beautiful store and I thought it was important to showcase the store as well as the online catalog. I want people to see the site and then want to visit the store if they are in the Fond du Lac area.

I have also just completed a site for our church. For several years I thought they should have a site so one day I offered to make one for them. A few months later, this is the result - holylandcluster.org. I think it will be very helpful to our parishioners and others as well. We will add more information as time goes on.

Well it's time to go do Thanksgiving Day stuff like cooking food and watching football. Happy Thanksgiving!

The Web Designer Finally Gets a Blog

I'm always a little bit behind the times so it's no surprise that I am just now creating my first blog. What took me so long you ask? Oh I don't know; certainly not lack of interest. I suppose mostly it was lack of need and lack of time. As for time, it's always a matter of giving something priority and just taking the time. Those cleaning jobs just got pushed off again! Now need is another issue. I still don't need a blog. What the heck will I write about? I guess I will write about blogging and what I learn through this latest endeavor. I am a web designer, I really should have a blog, right? For those of you who don't know what blog means or what a blog is, blog is short for Web-log. A diary of sorts, on the web. As with anything on the web, blogs have come a long way in just a few years. They are used in a variety of ways and have greatly expanded capabilities these days. Unfortunately any crazy with a keyboard can post their thoughts to the web. On the other hand, fortunately the sane among us don't have to read what the crazies write. :-)

I've been listening to folks talk about blogging for years now and I could understand the excitement, especially when blogs were first introduced several years ago. Basically anyone could make a web page to post thoughts, comments, photos, whatever their heart's desire. No messing with server issues or these things called HTML and FTP. And it was free!! I had a pretty good idea what blogs were all about but I wanted to learn more. I wanted to know how easy (or hard) it really is to create a blog and I wanted to know what can all be done once one is set up. Is it more than just posting thoughts and pics? I was also curious if I could use any aspects of blogging in my web design business.

So after 8 years of doing web design and contemplating starting a blog for years (however many years they've been around now), I decided to go for it this past week. The catalyst actually was Lynda.com. I registered there and got started with a few tutorials. Lynda.com is an online, movie-based tutorial resource. Their vast library focuses on software for web and graphic designers with tutorials for such programs as Dreamweaver, Flash, Photoshop, and Illustrator. They also include all Microsoft Office applications as well as one tutorial about blogging using Blogger.com. That one caught my eye so here I am. If I'm going to create a blog, I have to write an initial post!

There were some glitches along the way including Blogger not uploading to my host server so as of now, I am hosting with them on blogspot. Also lynda.com really needs to update their blogging tutorial. I was disappointed in the fact that it was created in 2004. That's way too many years gone past in the web/blogging world.

And while Molly, the instructor in the video did a fine job of stepping me through Blogger, she also told me I don't need to know any HTML but yet she pasted code into a place I would find very difficult to find and understand if I didn't know a lick of HTML. Yes, it is true you can create a blog without knowing a single tag or property or style, but you will get exactly what your blogging system gives you. For example, the background of my Blogger template was bright pink. Now I'm a pink/red lover, so naturally I picked the pink template. But even I thought it was a little too much pink so I wanted to tone it down a bit. That is only accomplished through the HTML code.

I hope to use this site for more information on blogging. As I learn, I will share. Now I'm sure there are tons of articles out on the web with a plethora of great advice, but I will be concerned with my little spec of the world. If questions come up as I'm going about my daily web design business, I will try to answer them here to help others as well. I will also look at other blogging systems and report my findings here.

I may also add posts for my MS Office students at Moraine Park Tech. School is changing over to Office 2007 this fall so all instructors are learning the very different, new version of each program - Access, Excel, PowerPoint, and Word. We are also required to go through the new textbooks and be familiar with the new curriculum. It is a lot of work but a very exciting time for all of us!

If you have questions, please feel free to ask. There are no dumb questions and I love to share my knowledge so I will certainly help if I can. My email address is not listed here because I prefer to not be found by every spam-bot on the web. You can however ask a question by posting here.