Saturday, December 31, 2005

Joomla!

http://darkmercury.net/Joomla

I don’t know why, but I like web design and tinkering around with websites.  Could never do it as a job though.. Some of you know the project I have been working on since the week before finals week (known as week of hell).  To distract myself from doing my real work, I started work on the KSU Precision Flight Team website.  I used Joomla for this, which is pretty much just Mambo.  I made the KSUAnime Site with Mambo in early 2004, and can’t say much has changed.  Joomla is the same thing as Mambo but open source I guess.  I thought Mambo was open source, but since I am a proponent of open source software and I’m curious by nature, I tried Joomla.  I’m definately a lot better at the Joomla/Mambo system then I was when I designed KSUAnime.  Looking back, I don’t even like the anime site.  I think a new skin in the near future is in order for that site.  But back to the Flight Team site.  I spent a lot of time on the skin of it, trying to make it look like the flight team jacket and had to fight a lot of CSS to achieve it, but it looks good now.  Now I’m trying to add the endless amount of content and information.  I know that once I move it to the KSU server all hell is going to break loose.  The only problem I have with Joomla is that it has to systemize everything.  I can’t just add a random page, it has to be a member of a category or something.  And I don’t like the publishing system.  Everything content-wise is added by a user, who by default has no access to “publish” anything, and so everything he writes stays hidden until an admin comes by and says “ok” and publishes it, so it appears on the site.  Not a bad feature if that’s what you’re looking for.  However, I am a very lazy admin, and so everyone’s posts will go by unpublished forever.  Would be fine if I could change the default access level, but no.  Best I can do is make everyone an admin, and then all hell breaks loose again.  For what I needed, which is pretty much contact info, team info, and most of all - the events calendar schedule, it’s okay.  I think the site has really come together and I’m pround of it.

Posted by eclipse on 12/31/2005 at 06:20 PM
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