Why The Xara Xone is developed in WordPress
Jon, I need to ask you: I split this “Not Safe For Work” thread off of Sketch’s Gallery thread out of respect and courtesy. And because this thread is O/T.
Now, should I split this topic again because you want to try to understand through tg’s members why The Xara Xone is built on a modified WordPress template instead of being designed monthly with Web Designer?
If you honestly don’t understand, I guess you could have written to me; that’s what the links on the bottom of every Xara Xone page are for.
In a nutshell, Jon, The Xara Group, the web developer and the web designer agreed in December 2011 when Gary Priester announced his retirement, that we needed something extensible and scalable as a platform for continuing The Xara Xone. And although Web Designer is terrific for small, hand-crafted, static websites, it was never created to handle the sheer volume of content we now have and anticipate will be generated in the years and decades to come.
We agreed that we needed a Content Management System, and although our web developer had been using the open source Joomla CMS for years, we agreed it was time to adopt a more graphics-friendly platform (WordPress) which has quickly risen through the ranks to become not just the personal blogging tool it began as, but a robust, extensible, capable system to use.
FYI, I do all my prototyping in Xara Designer Pro, and the lion’s share of the final graphics. I work off a template that is compatible with what my web developer is using, and not to put too fine a point on it, Jon, it’s a system that works quite well for us.
I think your understanding of how commercial websites are conceived of, and then down the pipeline to a finished product isn’t up to date.
There are programs with low-level controls and those with high-level controls. Web Designer sort of fits into the “high-level control” category of software: the user is insulated for the most part from the code that makes the website works, it used to be called “black box” technology, and this is ideal for designers who don’t or can’t muck around with code.
FYI, our web developer does a lot of the page coding in a text editor, not a fancy GUI. As a CMS, WordPress offers both high and low level controls over stuff, and today you can “get your hands dirty” according to your level of expertise. I myself am at a kindergarten-level of proficiency in writing HTML, but I’m wise enough to understand that you have to be really, really talented these days to be both a web designer and a web developer and be good at both, given the scale of projects that are needed in everyday business.
You’re fond of analogies, Jon, here’s one: a web developer creates the architecture of a website; they take a look at the environment, take into consideration content load, topology, conflicts with widgets, accessibility, contrast for the visually impaired, how bullet-proof the finished site will be, how the architecture can accommodate the overall look the web designer has drawn up, and so on.
HTML stands for Hypertext Markup Language, it is the language of the web, it’s what makes every web page function, and as a language, it has rules and syntax. We're fond of calling it "code" these days, and that's not far from the truth with version 5 and if you compare it to something like Visual Basic, but HTML is still a language, and there are some who are fluent in it, while others (like me) depend on "interpreters", software that makes pages a simple matter to design.
The web designer, to extend the analogy, is the one who specs the furniture, the color of the wallpaper, carpeting, tiling, cabinetry—the web designer gives content to the architecture built by the web developer. And to create something that’s a pleasure to visit and live in, the two professionals must work together, or in the case of people like Paul, he wears both hats and he must have some interesting personal disagreements on occasion! :)
So it ain’t sinister, or hypocritical, or purely mechanical to use a CMS instead of Web Designer to get a new Xara Xone up each month, Jon.
It’s practical, it’s the smart way to go about what we need to do, and it gives me extra time to develop new content.
Every good artist I’ve ever had the privilege to know works the same way, from the general to the specific, and all artists begin with a concept. Moreover, all great art begins with a concept, and not picking out your tools first. I’m happy to say that most of the time when I have a creative idea; I believe that Xara Designer Pro can express my visual idea exactly the way I envision it.
And when it doesn’t, I don’t sweat whether I’m being unfaithful to my favorite product.
My Best,
Gary
Re: Why The Xara Xone is developed in WordPress
I really did not want to get into this on this thread as it is about something else but it would be unfair not to.
Jon I think that your thinking is that if a piece of software is being sold to people on the premise that it is for creating websites, then the site promoting it should also be created using that software, and I for one agree with you, if it is not created using that software and a competitors then what message is that sending to the potential customer, for instance what if we discovered that microsoft were using computers with apples os to do their work because it is a better os. To demonstrate what Jon may be thinking:
http://muse.adobe.com/ promotes adobe muse and is built with adobe muse.
http://www.wysiwygwebbuilder.com/ promotes wysiwyg web builder and is built with wysiwyg web builder
http://www.wix.com/ promotes wix online web design and is built with wix
However I agree with Gary that certain situations require something else, in this case web designer simply does not have content management capabilities and so xara zone has to be built with something else (in this case wordpress) I think if they used a competitors software to make the site it would be, well just wrong, but wordpress is an opensource software so that does not matter.
Just my opinion, and I for one cannot wait till xara/magic decide that they have the capability to create their own websites using their own software.
Re: Why The Xara Xone is developed in WordPress
Thanks Gary -- that's a good explanation. And Skech, yes, you've understood how I feel correctly.
My takeaway from all this is that -- for large sites -- it's template time. And, to the extent that you can get the customer filling in their own information, with the template also giving them some eye-candy fun, it's a win-win for everybody. You're off the hook for a lot of the maintenance, and they don't have to pay top dollar for a web guru to code the changes.
Anyway, thanks to you both, and to everyone else who added to this thread, for helping me 'get into the 'Nineties'. Now, if I could just figure out how to advance the spark on that Model T out back...