ATHEN PALADINS FORUMS (in remaking)

I want to sell aftermarket scooter parts, and help the dudes who buy them install em on site.

And have like, models who bring us lemonade, and carry signs around with like round 2 on it and stuff.

You said you got a bottleneck with web, design, and such...
Gift from an Athen Paladin to another. Band of brothers.

This demo/draft page can be used from the frame below or directly at
EDIT: this is now the REAL SITE which looks at 99% like the draft BTW.
http://www.itgreenway.com

Some explanations at the bottom of this post. You do what you want, it's your business.


Edit: this is now the REAL site.





Misc stuff







Ok, some points:
It's your business and you do what you want. The above is a gift; it may help or not at all. No problem if it goes to the trash can. I mean it.

If you like it, I'll give you a (little) hand but you'll have to learn how the CMS I used (Joomla 1.5.7) works so you become independent fast.

A big issue must be solved before designing more accurately a web site: the structure, and hierarchy of your offer and services, and of your reasoning. More on that in another post later.

The above is quickly done. Beyond the first page, it's just a mess randomly populated with elements coming from a standard install of the CMS (Joomla) and the templates.

If you like the logos, they are yours, gift, period. Trademark/Copyright them. (I have the vector versions of course if you need.)

The template I used and modified is a commercial one (Joomla itself is free). Good news for you, my subscription to the templates bank means you don't have -and will never have- to pay for it. It's in the quota of the sites I can permanently install till the end of the World.

The "video" was created by me, gift too, BUT I used pictures (sample versions) from a commercial image bank. Even if they have been quite heavily edited and/or combined by me, if you wanted to use them in this slideshow or any other, you would have to buy them. Good news: it's really cheap, like a few dozen dollars for all of them maybe less. (And they would be better than my original material where I also add to roughly hide the watermarks.)

The "video" is a very smart system that allows almost everyone to create similar shows, I thought it would be convernient for you: you place the pictures in a folder, tell the system what folder it is, how long must pictures be displayed, etc. You're done.

If you want to see the admin part of Joomla, I'll give you the codes to enter. But as I told you, it's a mess ATM.

Once gain, feel FREE to do nothing with the above. I won't feel furstrated. People may like gifts or not; it's giving that counts.

wow Chris, i am a truly blown away that you would take the time to do this for me, i do not know what to say except ty so very much. You know exactly what i am trying to accomplish with my company and your use of color and design is absolutely extraordinary. Thank you Chris, seriously, really unbelievable stuff. We must have been on the same wave length because i downloaded Joomla last night and have been playing with it. I had never heard of cms before you told me about it the other day, and wow what can i say? I am truely humbled that you would help me like this, not knowing me or my company. I am so very thankful that i am a part of the Athen Paladins, truely some great and gifted people out there, also want to thank you all for your input: Chrisax, Grind42, Noobas, and Vasc for all of your input.

I absolutely love everything; the graphics, the front page, the logo design everything.

ty ty ty ty ty ty

Glad you find it helpful.

If you go for Joomla as a CMS, some reading could help. Unfortunately, the "perfect" guide to Joomla is still to be written, despite the ton of available books on this topic.

Let's say that each book, for beginners as well as experts, is useful between 25% to 60% of its content; the rest being junk, opinions we don't need, quotes from the manual or help files, etc.


Don't forget to read the installation manual supplied with Joomla in PDF or available on http://www.joomla.org and the Joomla! Quickstart http://help.joomla.org/ghop/feb2008/tas ... start.pdf/
Both are really minimal though.



The Joomla! Wiki for beginners contains some good directions and many links but offers little in itself
http://docs.joomla.org/Beginners

The FAQ part nevertheless is average to great, for specific questions
http://docs.joomla.org/Category:FAQ
(The Security part is clear and well done: http://docs.joomla.org/Security_and_Performance_FAQs )



Joomla! A user's guide
by Barrie M. North
Legal source: http://www.joomlabook.com + online bookstores
is a decent starting book, quite clear. (The creating templates from scratch chapter is extremely weak though, but it's not your goal and there are specific books for that.)

Building sites with Joomla! 1.5
by Hagen Graf
Pakt Publising
Legal source: http://www.joomla.org + online bookstores
is not worth buying except it contains extensive descriptions of Joomla administration menus and a lot of screenshots.


There are many other books, and several for experts or advanced users. Unfortunately, you can trash approximately 50% of each book. And some publishers wonder why emule is so popular...

Note: you might hear - and I don't disagree - that Drupal is technically a better CMS than Joomla. By several aspects, it's a bit less of a "bloatware" (although ALL CMS are bloatware), and although it looks less friendly, its admin interface is often more straightforward and efficient.

Also, the logic behind Joomla! is sometimes confusing (for example, at first sight you might think that menus can only have 2 levels as you can only create sections and categories to sort your articles: it's not true, you can have as many sub-levels as you want in menus; sections and categories are for your own use, or for specific use and data can be allocated to any sub-level menu.)

Still, when it comes to the look, Joomla templates are much more impressive and sophisticated in general, and, regarding extensions and third-party modules, Joomla is the winner (but not all extensions are free!) The community is also extremely active and large.

Anyhow, the argument between fans of different CMS is like the debate between the fans of different Linux distributions... Don't expect it to stop.

Now, a CMS remains a CMS, it will never work as well as custom pages and will always be slower for the same use. (BTW I recommend developing on local as much as possible.)

But with a CMS you can do in minutes what could take hours to custom create, and in hours what could take days. It's an old and never-ending debate.

Geez Chris, that's some pretty nifty stuff you just threw together.

What do you do for a living? And can I see some of your professionally done work?

I've decided I want a webpage. I'm going to get this joomba thing and make a webpage, dedicated to scooters, AO, models and .... beer.

Naice!

noobas wrote:Geez Chris, that's some pretty nifty stuff you just threw together.

What do you do for a living?

Work Hard, Play Hard, Die Hard & Lub all Paladins

Good definition Grind

As for the other concerns, I'll preserve a bit of privacy.

But, Noobas, if you are going to make a site and if it's worth going the Joomla way (there is a learning curve), describe what you would like to do so we can have an idea of an appropriate style.

ha, I was just kidding.

but, if I was going to have a website, I'd want a scooter section, a beer section, and a AO section, and girls all over.

I might have to start a modelling production studios, girls with beer and scooters and AO.

That sounds appealing.

What's a wolrd?

"We are a human size corporation that used the best of technology to go beyond paper and obsolete expenses to the world of digital media and communication for more efficiency, more respect of our Wolrd, and in the end more profit. With us, you could take the same way."

What's a draft?

But thanks a lot for reading it and pointing out the typo. It's the kind of things that can survive the draft step!

Post with demo, logos, etc above updated. Scroll up.

Draft has been updated with the real slideshow with the pictures you got.

Eco Friendly Kids pictures has been added a a page signature near the name of the company

Live support uses real image.

Logos on page and separate image with the correct spelling "The papers edge" (Right? Because you had two spellings on your pages.)

"World" typo corrected. (Thx Adoni.)

Excellent work Chris, looks top notch as always. Again i cannot stress this enough but to say ty Chris and all of you AP that posted, for all the help and constructive criticism. I am really glad i reached out and told you all about the company we are trying to build. The site looks amazing, my business partner and I are very pleased with it. Chris you are amazing at this kind of work, you have the ability to take someones idea and make it reality...that is a pretty cool gift to share with people.

Logos on page and separate image with the correct spelling "The papers edge" (Right? Because you had two spellings on your pages.)

yes Chris i know i had 2 spelling of The Papers Edge. Do you think adding the "LLC" is redundant? or do you think "The Papers Edge, LLC" looks more credible? I do like the way you have it which is "The Papers Edge", which i think is how we are licensed and trademarked. No one else can use this name afaik.

The images look great btw, i am really happy with them Chris. Also if you do find another spot you feel needs another image, i do have 3 credits left at http://www.istockphoto.com available.

Live support uses real image.

I was wondering if i can attach my http://www.websitealive.com/ chat code to that image somewhere. We have the basic subscription atm, think around $40/mo and i have it customized for the company. Its really simple embedded code placed on each page of the web site, not sure how it will work on this template though. There is 2 different embedded pieces of code: One for the Chat service and one that tracks hits when people come to the site. Eventually we will probably upgrade the service to include full tracking reports and such down the road once we get more hits, and more business.

Also i eventually i would like to implement http://www.limesurvey.org/ somewhere as well so when potential clients look at the site, a form comes up to fill out to see what products/ services they might be interested in. Now i can have the Chat program perform similar by having it automatically come up with a certain period of time (say 10-15 seconds) a person hits the site. comments/suggestions would be helpful on that part

Adoni Thanks for posting bud and using that sharp eye of yours to find that grammar error Human spell checker ftw

I'm looking, Shartris. Had to take care of the scam issue Enye got (see AP private gerenal messages), and then back to you.

shartris wrote:Do you think adding the "LLC" is redundant? or do you think "The Papers Edge, LLC" looks more credible? I do like the way you have it which is "The Papers Edge", which i think is how we are licensed and trademarked. No one else can use this name afaik.

The logo is long enough. LLC won't bring anything else IMHO. In the texts, you can refer to The Papers Edge LLC and it's already in the copyright at the bottom of the pages, and in the Contacts.

Also, you said the company had roots as deep as the 1980's. Same company? Or same name? Any relation you can use to your benefit? A way to say "founded 1985" for example? Or to stress how old in business you are in a way or another?

Most people think this way: "if this company is old, this means that what it does must be good, and therefore it means this could be good for me".

shartris wrote:The images look great btw, i am really happy with them Chris. Also if you do find another spot you feel needs another image, i do have 3 credits left at http://www.istockphoto.com available.

Ok. We'll see. Just FYI remember the credits are good for one year after purchase.

shartris wrote:I was wondering if i can attach my http://www.websitealive.com/ chat code to that image somewhere. We have the basic subscription atm, think around $40/mo and i have it customized for the company. Its really simple embedded code placed on each page of the web site, not sure how it will work on this template though. There is 2 different embedded pieces of code: One for the Chat service and one that tracks hits when people come to the site. Eventually we will probably upgrade the service to include full tracking reports and such down the road once we get more hits, and more business.

If they are not stupid, they must supply a code that works with CMS (I hope they don't use an onload instruction, as several javascript scripts with onload on the same page can be a source of problems.) I would need to see the different versions of the code + maybe they gave you instructions, some "how-to" or some link. PM me if it contains confidential stuff or/and replace the confidential stuff with junk.

shartris wrote:Also i eventually i would like to implement http://www.limesurvey.org/ somewhere as well so when potential clients look at the site, a form comes up to fill out to see what products/ services they might be interested in. Now i can have the Chat program perform similar by having it automatically come up with a certain period of time (say 10-15 seconds) a person hits the site. comments/suggestions would be helpful on that part

People consider pop-ups intrusive and disturbing, unless specifically requested or necessary by definition for such or such use.

For a site that has first of all to be read, understood, memorized, and known, it may not be the best thing to open pop-ups already.

On the other hand, testing how people "receive" your site and message is important, as well as fixing some possible issues that can always exist in typography, hierarchy, layout, information itself, etc.

First a link to a webmaster (even if it's you!) is always a good thing, like "We follow a policy of permanent improvement, so feel free to report any issue or make any comment about this site to....". Visitors are more inclined to report issues with a specific address.
(Usually some student will write to say that your site is crap but he can do much better and he works cheap.)

Second, when the site is almost ready, show it to friends, family, etc. Of course they are not your potential customers but seeing their reactions will be interesting, especially about the navigation in the site and what they memorize and see first.

Third, somewhere on the pages, you could have a "box" asking people to participate in a short survey about the site. Something can even blink if necessary.

Nevertheless, without a LOT of answers (and it's rare to have a lot), such polls just reflect personal opinions. You can't base a strategy on them. You can just fix possible issues, and from time to time, get an idea.

You can as well link to a page made with limesurvey, or use a solution embedded in the chat program. As I don't know it, I can't say if one thing is better than the other.



Last bu not least, post here or PM me what hosting you use and the link to their guides/FAQS if any.

I need to know a few things, like total web space, database size, limitations, the versions of PHP and MYSQL, and also if you can use htaccess files. (Configurations files.)

I already know the web server is Apache/2.2.9 (just need to read the response headers of the web pages to know that).