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Website design recommendations for a small business site?

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tranglos:
Re. multiple languages - I haven't used Joomla for that purpose myself but the fact that the United Nations use it to build their site suggests that languages should work pretty well.
-Carol Haynes (April 22, 2009, 05:16 PM)
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True, but what web designer wouldn't want to have UN in their client portfolio? It's probably customized to no end.

I completely agree it should be possible to have a multilingual site in Joomla. It's just that this is a make-or-break issue for this particular site, since a technically faulty or incomplete localization will reflect badly on a company that offers just such services.

I really recomment Artisteer for making templates of your own - you need ABSOLUTELY NO artistic talent just the ability to fiddle and decide what looks good. Plus you can use it for Joomla, Drupal and WordPress (or even a vanilla HTML static site). It is wonderfully easy.
-Carol Haynes (April 22, 2009, 05:16 PM)
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Ouch, but it's expensive. The version that exports Joomla template sells for $129.95 (plus VAT in my case). For that price I could buy two or three perfectly good ready-made templates (though not unique designs). If I understand it correctly, I would be limited to the stock template designs that come with the program. That's fine if I find one I like and my wife accepts; otherwise it's no good. I've tried Xara web designer (which you previously suggested), and I didn't like any of the built-in templates well enough.

That said, I've downloaded the trial and will see where it takes me.

Thanks a lot again for all the useful suggestions!

wraith808:
I've used templatemonster.com and 4templates.com for templates before, and I love the templates.  I haven't seen anyone using the same templates as I, so the incidence of duplication, at least in my case, was low.  I just used photoshop and dreamweaver to customize, and off I went...

steeladept:
True, but what web designer wouldn't want to have UN in their client portfolio? It's probably customized to no end.
-tranglos (April 22, 2009, 05:40 PM)
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Perhaps, but once it is customized, why not make it available to all - unless it is customized by the UN, in which case why go with Joomla (or any other content management) since they must customize & verify each site by hand?  No, I think they (the UN) probably use the same engine or something very close to the original.

I completely agree it should be possible to have a multilingual site in Joomla. It's just that this is a make-or-break issue for this particular site, since a technically faulty or incomplete localization will reflect badly on a company that offers just such services.
-tranglos (April 22, 2009, 05:40 PM)
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If it is that critical (and I agree it is), I would suggest considering not using the multi-lingual translators and actually make three different pages yourself.  To make it easier, you may wish to use the translator to translate the bulk of it, copy it in to the new page, and have your wife fix any issues.

tranglos:
If it is that critical (and I agree it is), I would suggest considering not using the multi-lingual translators and actually make three different pages yourself.  To make it easier, you may wish to use the translator to translate the bulk of it, copy it in to the new page, and have your wife fix any issues.
-steeladept (April 22, 2009, 06:27 PM)
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I'm not sure I understand. Translating the content is not a problem, this is what we do :) I should be able to design menus and submenus in Joomla that would point to the correct language versions of each page. My concern is with (a) strings that are part of the template and (b) strings that come from the core engine.

(a) may not be an issue, if I can use different templates for specific pages. I don't know yet whether this is possible (it would be easy in TextPattern, for example). However, looking at some free Joomla templates I've downloaded, they don't seem to contain any displayable strings of their own; that's very good.

(b) is potentially a bigger issue, if Joomla embeds any displayable strings in php code. I don't think I would be able to modify it to the point of swapping out Joomla's internal php modules, so a good translator mod is probably my only recourse.

tranglos:
I've used templatemonster.com and 4templates.com for templates before, and I love the templates.  I haven't seen anyone using the same templates as I, so the incidence of duplication, at least in my case, was low.  I just used photoshop and dreamweaver to customize, and off I went...
-wraith808 (April 22, 2009, 06:15 PM)
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Thanks for that, wraith. Can I ask a favor, please? When I look at templates like these:

(1)  http://www.4templates.com/view/xhtmlcss-templates/20/AX0398BL
(2)  http://www.4templates.com/view/xhtmlcss-templates/2/AX0237GR

I cannot easily tell whether the section links (the column of blue menu buttons in the middle in (1); the row of black buttons under the main banner in (2)) are made of images or text. Do you know, or can you tell by looking at the screenshots, or by comparing with the templates you have used yourself? The screenshots they show are too small to tell the difference, and whoever is running the site isn't responding to questions asked via their contact form.

Also, the templates you bought from them - are they fixed width or fluid? Thanks a lot in advance!

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