Blog help

[Jono]

Hi, I have been conned into helping a relative to produce a website, he wants to put in an updatable Blog on one of the pages, is this possible in Xwd? I am old, close to dementia and have only enough knowledge to be dangerous! If this is possible, could anybody advise on suitable blog software as well?
Thanks
John Milligan

[steve.ledger]

"suitable blog software" will mean something different to each person you ask.

Remember that Web Designer is a WYSIWYG 'graphically designed and laid out' web page creator that exports to HTML when done.
It is not a HTML editor.
WYSIWYG means (in short) that what you have designed in WD and exported to HTML that's it, done. You can only edit the saved .web file later and make changes before exporting to HTML again and then re publishing your site.
Web Designer cannot natively created dynamically expanding HTML (there is one tweak in Covoxers Tweakset which goes towards helping here, but it's not shipped as part of WD and likely not officially supported by Xara Co).

A blog that needs to 'grow' (dynamically) as new entries are made, will not easily fit into the fixed page 'absolute positioning CSS of a WD created design.

[remi]

Hi Jono,

I would recommend Wordpress as blog system.

see also our threads about blogs

Regards,
Remi

[slavelle]

In short - there are a few ways to incorporate a Blog to an XWD site.

1. Use wordpress.ORG (hosted on your own platform) and use a placeholder to contain it. Since content in these database-fed applications is variable by nature, you will need to make use of some way of scrolling the content, either by using a scrollable <div> in that placeholder or whatever other method you can find.

2. Create a simple MySQL database on the site (at the hosting provider) containing a table along with a form that can fill that table, storing something like: Title, Date, Ariticle text for the administrative side. Then on the site itself, do as #1 above and put a scrollable <div> in your web page with some php to read the database contents into html elements within that placeholder.

3. Get a wordpress.COM blog (hosted on wordpress's platform), apply a theme to it that matches your site, put a banner at the top of it that also matches your site, and have the link from the main site launch your wordpress blog in a seperate window.

#3 is the easiest (and based on your description of yourself probably the most realistic, fastest, and least frustrating for you) and both #1 and #2 will take some know-how and patience to get working, though I think #2 is slightly easier of the two because you can use a simpler and smaller script (that can be found and assembled via google pretty easily) that only contains what you want in it, where #1 requires you to understand the structure of already written php code that is not simple to understand unless you are fairly familiar.

Hope this helps.

[Jono]

Thank you everybody for your help. I have gone the CoffeeCup route, and it seems to work OK in preview, Firefox, and Opera..
Regards
John Milligan

[newWebDesigner1]

"suitable blog software" will mean something different to each person you ask.

Remember that Web Designer is a WYSIWYG 'graphically designed and laid out' web page creator that exports to HTML when done.
It is not a HTML editor.
WYSIWYG means (in short) that what you have designed in WD and exported to HTML that's it, done. You can only edit the saved .web file later and make changes before exporting to HTML again and then re publishing your site.
Web Designer cannot natively created dynamically expanding HTML (there is one tweak in Covoxers Tweakset which goes towards helping here, but it's not shipped as part of WD and likely not officially supported by Xara Co).

A blog that needs to 'grow' (dynamically) as new entries are made, will not easily fit into the fixed page 'absolute positioning CSS of a WD created design.

S, you helped me so much in the past I feel like I should pay you and i would. really.

but I am getting so confused with all the dif drupal, wordpress, and joomal etc. php source engins or whatever they are named.

I want to be able to update a page with text and pictures , maybe a video embeded, without redoing my entire .web page each time.

I was told wordpress. org is the ticket. I installed it. I host is lunarpages and they have fantiscio so it is easy to set stuf up.

i was thinking of what you described above. to put the wordpress in
a link off from the rest of the site and make it look as similar as I can.
yea I am css newb. I leanred programming so understand it when I read it. just dont like to do it and dont have the definitions memorized yet.

what i was wondering is . If I can be able to make a .web page that
allows me to "push everything down" . I would def prefer that.
As i love the freedom Xara allows me wth the way my pages end up looking like.
I don't care if ppl look and see I use htm extensions and not pho etc and may thing "oh this is a old fashioned site"
I am. and HTML is burned in my brain. I just misssed going to school when they were teaching php and the "new" way of designing websites.
so now I am learning it all over again.
the prob is , there are so many ppl teaching it , and each have what "they" like do do things.

well sor for ranting on. i should delete the WOT but wtf.

my main point is I want to have like a blog style .web page .

I dont need or care about keeping track of the dates and only I will be updating the page. and comments. I have that taken care of. i dont need comments under each new section I add.

If it is not posssible . I will either use word press.org and send visitors to that

or just do what I do now and every few days create a new page and rename the old ones. Its not that much effort.
the big plus for me is I can do what I want. visually wise.


well its long i know. as always.

D.

[slavelle]

If you set up a wordpress.org site and then export your xara site a level above it, you can just include the wordpress index.php in a placeholder on the page that you allow to scroll, or you can use the tweak that allows a page to grow downward (which I havaen't really messed with to understand ecxactly how it works).

either way, if you modify the index.php within the wordpress theme folder to not include the header or footer and you use an appropriately sized placeholder, it actually works quite well. Then you can use the wordpress admin to modify the contents of that section of the site. The only downsides I found to it is that wordpress likes to link back to things within itself with php "directives", and they cause the ACTUAL wordpress page to be displayed rather than the page embedded within your xwd site, which of course is then missing all your styling and such. The only time I found this to be a problem was with things like RSS feeds and such, which you can make your own of if you like and not use the Wordpress ones.

It can be done and it's not that hard if you know anything about code and the general layout of the wordpress files.

Let me know if you have any specific questions and I'll see if I can help.

[newWebDesigner1]

thanks Sl.

You helped me much. To get my head wrapped around the "nuts and bolts"
of this idea.
I actually was a programmer but no didly css. So its like being in school all over again. except I at least undersand the logic of how it works and can read it and 'see" what it is doing. It does not look complicated but it is something you must memorize as far as the exact syntax etc.

oh as far as the RSS. if I can, and prob / hopefully will be allowd to with WP admin. I don't even need or care about them.

yea, I know it may not be the "professional" way every site is made or looks.

most have a dozen RSS feeds and link to's etc.
and keep track of stats etc.
Personally I could care less. lol

call me old fashioned, and I am from the AOL bbs days.... so I just want to
have it look "cool".

If I could have it totally my way. I would prob use different colored text all over the place. lol

and actually did on one page for the fourth of July, for fun.

hey I like color.

well thanks again.

knew youd be on top of things as you are.

I got lots to do but am enjoying learning it all. I am creating a better Hi Def
photo graphic for the main page also. yea I took some heat for that and my gallerys althogh I like it, I have decided to comprimise and have the pics
enlarge to a max of 1000 or 800pix.
I like them huge. lol.

Thanks again

Dave