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For those who write articles on CMS, a question.
40hz:
Thanks!
Edit: I forgot to ask does the Wordpress stack (I don't really know what stacks is) support everything from simulating adding Adsense, Wordpress plugins, Writing from Windows Live Writer-like editor to the stacks or is it just a simulator for the barebones service?
-Paul Keith (September 29, 2009, 12:35 AM)
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Solution stack
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In computing, a solution stack is a set of software subsystems or components needed to deliver a fully functional solution, e.g. a product or service.
For example, to develop a web application, the designer needs to use an operating system, web server, database and programming language. Another version of a solution stack is operating system, middleware, database, and applications.
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Basically, a stack is the complete environment needed to run something. Think frozen dinners - except you'll like these. ;D
In the case of Bitnami, it usually means an Apache webserver, PHP environment, and the MySQL database engine combined with whatever app you want to run that needs them. They're all preconfigured and install via a single Windows .exe or NIX package.
Bitnami stacks are not emulator. They're the actual software packages. Anything available for Worpress can be used. You could even install a live production system on your server using them. Some people do. (See my previous caveat about that.) It works the same because it uses the exact same software you can download yourself from Wordpress, the Apache Foundation, and all the others.
Great tools. Right up there with library furniture and firemans' helmets! :Thmbsup:
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Re: Adsense et al - Anything that uses outside services or requires enrollment would first need to be set up with that provider. But that's no more a limitation with Bitnami than it would be if you set up your blog (or whatever) with an ISP hosting service.
Paul Keith:
@trianglos:
Joomla, by comparison, got the menu right (but little else).
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Your post made me curious. Could you post a screenshot on why a menu in Joomla is more optimized for 50 or more pages?
I just can't imagine a menu that can handle 20 or so pages but suddenly switches usability with 50 or more pages.
@40hz
Thanks. It still went way over my head (because I know nothing about servers especially when using a personal PC) but I think I'll just gut this one out as I can't think of any question that would make it clearer to me.
tranglos:
@trianglos:
Joomla, by comparison, got the menu right (but little else).
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Your post made me curious. Could you post a screenshot on why a menu in Joomla is more optimized for 50 or more pages?
-Paul Keith (September 29, 2009, 12:06 PM)
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Well, there are two major differences:
1. In WordPress, you can have a menu that shows all categories or all pages. (Categories are used to organize blog posts, while the page menu links to static pages. Both categories and pages can be nested). You can have either of the two menus on top, and both on the sidebar. The menus are generated automatically, however, so no matter what theme you use, you don't really have much control over the structure of the menu. You can only hide certain categories or certain pages. Also, the menus you choose will always be displayed the same way, on all pages. (There may be plugins that give more control over WordPress menus, I don't know yet.)
In Joomla, by contrast, you create menus manually, which takes some work. But this means you can have any number of different menus and show different menus on different pages. (There is a little hitch to that, but in general that's what you get.) You can have two or more items, in different menus, that link to the same page, for example. You can create menu items that link to individual pages, or items that link to blog-like listings of articles, or items that link to "table of content" layouts with links to more stuff. And certain plugins add their own menu types - e.g. there's a photo gallery plugin that adds a menu item type that automatically creates a gallery page. Maintaining the menu(-s) does take some work, and if you change the menu item that links to an article, the URL of the article will change too, which is bad. But overall, Joomla's structure is much more flexible, especially if your site is not all a blog.
2. The second difference is in the way the menus work. Here's a menu of static pages for my blog site (in Polish), using a free WordPress theme called Fusion:
For those who write articles on CMS, a question.
It's quite long already, and imagine what's going to happen when there are three or four times as many pages. It's not easy to find stuff in it, and it's not easy to navigate. The selected page is not highlighted, and the nesting, while indicated, isn't all that clear (nested items should be indented). And it's still the best effect I can get - all other themes I've tried were worse in this regard. To improve, the menu should be collapsible, indented, and should only show the expanded portion.
This is the same WordPress menu, displayed on top:
For those who write articles on CMS, a question.
This is better, because the menu is collapsible, so the lists are not as long. But (a) this menu can only be shown on top and is only navigable with the mouse, and (b) if there are many levels of nesting, it will not be very usable, either - much like the Start menu in Windows. And since you can only have one menu on top (the "better" one), you have to choose whether to use it for pages or for categories. The other menu has to live in the sidebar.
I do not have the same menu composed in Joomla, so the effect of comparison will not be as persuasive, perhaps, but this is a typical Joomla menu on the sidebar (using a commercial theme):
For those who write articles on CMS, a question.
It's pretty small, but you can see that only the "path" to the current page is expanded: New products -> eStopWatch -> Download. Graphical indicators make it easy to see where you are in the overall menu structure. If I now clicked the "Activehotkeys" item, the currently expanded part of the menu would fold, and the clicked item would open up. Perhaps such a menu is also possible in WordPress, but I haven't seen one like that.
Now, here is the same Joomla menu displayed as a top menu:
For those who write articles on CMS, a question.
This one works pretty much like the top menu in WordPress, only here it's prettier. It's the sidebar menus that really differ in functionality.
Paul Keith:
@trianglos,
Ah I see...
Would you say that the nest/outline view capability is the only big ui difference between optimizing for mutli-page static pages in Joomla?
I ask this because I have seen people praise things like Tumblr's archive (example) but criticize it because the rest of the ui doesn't quite match. (Like that page has no search engine)
Others have praised popurls' and Alltop's way of simplifying the Netvibes engine lay-out.
Still there are some uis which I feel have the potential of being a better way of negating discovery of old blog posts without forcing it to use a model of pick 1 random article like OurSignal's way of showing aggregated news.
Still kind of confusing but I guess to understand my question, you would have to consider people like me who don't feel comfortable with any kinds of list so when thinking of a multi-post static page ui for us, my question stems from asking whether the difference is just Joomla's ability to create outline style categories and top menus (I know I've already said that before) or you are just showing one of the more obvious ways that Joomla differs from Wordpress? (That is if I focused on Joomla, I should have a more tech-newbie friendlier way of going wild with menus so that I can design/experiment with a multi-post static page that is on par with being an advanced website designer/developer and is tailored made for people like me who prefer other ways of navigating besides outline lists.)
tranglos:
Would you say that the nest/outline view capability is the only big ui difference between optimizing for mutli-page static pages in Joomla?
-Paul Keith (September 29, 2009, 02:57 PM)
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I think so now, but while I've spent a lot of time trying out various CMS-es, I can't claim any significant experience with any of them yet. So my impressions may be somewhat superficial.
Note that the approach WordPress takes makes sense, since it is primarily a blogging platform. If you post often, pretty soon you will have hundreds, eventually thousands of posts, and no menu can handle that and stay usable. So the idea of having an automatic menu that lists only categories, then simply browsing through a timeline of posts, is rational. It just doesn't work too well when you have mostly static content, rather than blog posts that grow every day.
I ask this because I have seen people praise things like Tumblr's archive (example) but criticize it because the rest of the ui doesn't quite match. (Like that page has no search engine)
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It's the first time I've seen it, and I don't think I like it much. The intro text is too short to make sense of or get an idea what the article is about. And I wouldn't want to scroll through several screenfuls of such little blocks. But it certainly is a novel idea :)
On the other hand, if the intro text was a little longer, this layout could work for incremental search. In FireFox I can start typing, and the browser jumps to the nearest match. The Tumblr layout does make it easy to find text in this manner - but only in the first few words of each post, which isn't all that practical.
Others have praised popurls' and Alltop's way of simplifying the Netvibes engine lay-out.
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And these are not bad at all!
Still there are some uis which I feel have the potential of being a better way of negating discovery of old blog posts without forcing it to use a model of pick 1 random article like OurSignal's way of showing aggregated news.
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Ouch! :) I can tell which articles I am *supposed* to look at in this design, but all the less-prominent articles are like noise. I suppose you could use that for images, but with text it's pretty self-defeating. Maybe not if you have very young eyes.
Still kind of confusing but I guess to understand my question, you would have to consider people like me who don't feel comfortable with any kinds of list so when thinking of a multi-post static page ui for us, my question stems from asking whether the difference is just Joomla's ability to create outline style categories and top menus (I know I've already said that before) or you are just showing one of the more obvious ways that Joomla differs from Wordpress? (That is if I focused on Joomla, I should have a more tech-newbie friendlier way of going wild with menus so that I can design/experiment with a multi-post static page that is on par with being an advanced website designer/developer and is tailored made for people like me who prefer other ways of navigating besides outline lists.)
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My aim was to show the differences - particularly in the light of how I praised WordPress, yet ultimately did not find it suitable for my software site.
Beyond that, I think a lot depends on the nature of your content and audience. People over 40 may not be happy with Tumblr's or OurSignal's way of presenting information; younger people may be OK with that. Also, how important is it that your visitors actually read or scan the whole listing? Are they supposed to do that, or do they just arrive and click a specific link they're interested in?
You could google for articles on website usability; there's a lot of good advice. I learned a lot from Joel Spolsky's User Interface Design for Programmers (his book is on Amazon, and he published online a large part of it). The rules for the web will often be similar.
In my experience radical new designs may be visually captivating, but they often volate even basic rules of usability (such as, don't show too much dense text at once; don't use too many colors because they distract; don't spread the text across the whole width of the page, etc.) You may be able to find some middle ground. Check out the BBC News site: they use lists arranged into blocks of different but coherent styles, so that they don't look too much like lists, and the content is sectioned in a very clear way. It's easy to scan through the whole page, and it's equally easy to go directly to just the special link you want. (I seem to recall BBC website won some usability awards, but don't quote me on that.)
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