"Not Safe for Work" designation (and opinions)

[handrawn]

you cannot compare web designer and wordpress like that

rather, if web designer is a cadillac, then wordpress is a whole fleet of lorries [or wagons or artics or whatever you call them] - you would spend for ever hauling the freight in a cadillac fast though it may be

but designer is used for the graphics on xara.com as I recall, I'm sure that has been mentioned, as you might expect...

[jon404]

@handrawn -- sorry for the bad analogy. But I really don't understand. XaraXone looks like a straightforward web site, nothing tricky. Why wouldn't you want to use Web Designer to create it and to maintain it? Look, I haven't kept up with website software for the last three years. Bring me up to date -- is WordPress actually preferable to Xara Web Designer for XaraXone-type websites? Ones with some monthly new material, links to outside stuff like YouTube videos, and links to lots of archived material?

I guess I'm missing it -- seems like Web Designer would be perfect, at least for the home page and any new material coming in. What do you think?

[pauland]

Wordpress and other CMS based sites allow easy updates to sites allowing the updater to concentrate on updating content rather than worrying so much about site structure and layout. Wordpress and systems like it are template-based - you set up the site layout and appearance (colour theme, etc) and from then on all updates are about content not laying out the site structure. It makes for a consistent website that can be updated by several people if necessary.

Unlike Xara software, there is no design file, the system is controlled from files and a database on the web server and you can get loads of different widgets and ready-made themes, or roll your own.

You can update the site from any computer, so it's ideal for an organisation where it's not possible for everyone to sit around a PC to work on a website. It's also ideal for large websites with a lot of content. You don't end up with a massive single file on your computer getting slower and slower as your site gets bigger.

I guess I'm missing it -- seems like Web Designer would be perfect, at least for the home page and any new material coming in. What do you think?

Yes, you are missing it.

Xara software is perfect for many types of site and circumstances, but it's not perfect software and not ideal for many situations. The same can be said for any software product.

You ask if WordPress is preferable to Xara and I would say that depends as much on the capabilities and skillset of the web designer, who is doing the updates and the where they are located - not just the kind or size of website.

[jon404]

Thanks. I'm getting it. WordPress is like something called Teamsite that Qualcomm brought in before I retired, so non-Web savvy admins could add pix and text to canned layouts for engineering-group intranet sites. Sort of awkward to use, but it ended the bottleneck of having to wait for an HTML coder to become available. And, like you said, corporate consistency... same look 'n feel everywhere.

Back to a car analogy, I guess we are moving from the 'anything goes' pre-Model T era, into the age of assembly line production. But XaraXone is the last place where I'd expect to see this happen. Times change, don't they? Anyway, thanks for bringing me up to date.

[handrawn]

Hi

For me it's all about databases - I use wordpress more or less as an online access point to a database, it's designed for this

[Gare]

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

[Cloud]

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.

[jon404]

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...