By lauras2008 on
People have asked this same question in different ways but none seems to ask/answer exactly *my* question.
I'm a visual designer, pretty good at HTML and less good at CSS. I've been hired to create a custom design for my school's website. Ordinarily I would design the page in Photoshop, cut it up and code it in HTML and I would be done. But they need a CMS (mainly to update pages -- no blogging, e-commerce or anything fancy) and we want to create a custom look for the site.
I see that this can be done with Drupal. But do I need to be a CSS expert to do it, or is my HTML experience enough? Is it fairly straightforward or ... ???
Would Joomla make my life easier?
Thanks,
LauraS
Comments
if i understand you
if i understand you correctly, drupal vs joomla is not really relevant to your question. Web design in general is all about css and html. CSS is what puts the 'style' in web design. You can of course keep it simple, but the pizzazz of the design will be a direct result of the CSS, not the html.
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"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - Lao Tzu
"God helps those who help themselves." - Ben Franklin
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not sure I agree
My understanding of CSS is that it's a "lighter" way of coding for the same design, and a way to separate the presentation layer from the back end. But whether the site has "pizazz" or not is just up to the visual design, not the code ... no?
Another related question -- my site is almost certainly going to have a typical "home" page that is primarily visual, with navigation, and teasers and callouts to the different sections of the site. NOT just another templated page. Is this possible?
One last thing, can I have a Flash video (simple animation, not interactive) in a Drupal site?
Thanks
But whether the site has
Precisely-- but html has no inherent visual design. It's added with CSS and graphics.
You bet! But that is accomplished with css and graphics. Drupal provides a veritable cornucopia of classes and ids with which to theme via css by default and you can always add your own.
again-- you bet! drupal can do anything you can do with traditional html/css and then some.
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"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - Lao Tzu
"God helps those who help themselves." - Ben Franklin
"Search is your best friend." - Worldfallz
what's wrong with HTML
What do you mean, "html has no inherent visual design"? HTML is just code -- no more, no less than CSS. By themselves, they are just a bunch of text on a page. Both HTML and CSS need graphics added into the mix in order to make the page look good. I know that CSS allows for more interactivity than HTML alone (using DHTML for dropdown menus, for example), but other than this added interactivity, what can CSS do that HTML can't?
I'm not trying to be difficult, I honestly don't get this.
LauraS
I don't think you're trying
I don't think you're trying to be difficult, so no worries. But honestly, html and css couldn't be more different. HTML is structure and css is presentation-- you should not be handling design with HTML any more. Though many of the tags still work most, if not all, are deprecated and will be completely removed from html at some point.
I'm probably just not explaining it clearly-- take a look at http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_difference_between_HTML_and_CSS
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"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - Lao Tzu
"God helps those who help themselves." - Ben Franklin
"Search is your best friend." - Worldfallz
Using HTML for presentation
Using HTML for presentation is deprecated. Its a hang-over from the bad-old-days of the internet before CSS support in web browsers reached a point where we could kiss it goodbye.
HTML is a structural language - used for marking up a documents "structure" - such as dividing up the page into logical "divisions" (DIV tag), headings (h1, h2 etc) and other elements such as paragraphs, lists and tabular data.
CSS is a presentational language - used for styling the structural elements. CSS's job is to define how a structural element will LOOK. This is how we seperate STRUCTURE from PRESENTATION.
In the dark ages of the internet we had horrible presentational html tags such as the FONT tag and browsers went hard core on adding style to structural tags, such as defining size and weight to headings - they did this because there was nothing else, until we invented CSS, and everything changed.
http://www.w3schools.com/css/css_intro.asp
So, to answer your question - unless you want to design your site entirely using images/flash etc, then you need to learn CSS.
Need help with IE?
Learn basic XHTML and CSS first.
Get smart with web specs.
Pimp your Drupal 8 Toolbar - make it badass.
Adaptivetheme - theming system for people who don't code.
I'm not sure this answers my question
My basic question is, what do I need to do in order to take a custom design and make it work with Drupal?
I like the idea of starting with a template and editing it, but I'm not sure that will work... It's likely I'll have images where the "themes" don't; and in general my page layout may not necessarily conform to any of the theme layouts (especially on the home page ...)
Do I need to hire a PHP developer?
Thanks,
LauraS.
...
Well, if you don't have the skills then your choices are 1) buy a template, such as from Top Notch Themes or 2) Hire a theme developer 3) Learn the skills, at least enough to make it happen.
If you do choose to hire a developer, be sure they know Drupal theming. Knowing PHP is just a part of it, they also need an excellent grasp of the Drupal theme system and Drupal in general + requisite CSS mastery.
Pimp your Drupal 8 Toolbar - make it badass.
Adaptivetheme - theming system for people who don't code.
My basic question is, what
see http://drupal.org/node/313510 and a previous comment of mine where I listed several resources that were helpful to me: http://drupal.org/node/260227#comment-849472.
It will involve knowledge of html, css, and some, but not extensive, php.
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"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - Lao Tzu
"God helps those who help themselves." - Ben Franklin
"Search is your best friend." - Worldfallz
In Short
Yes, you must understand CSS to do this with Drupal. I would venture to say that Joomla will make this more difficult, not less.
Your best bet is to pick a Drupal theme which most closely matches your design, and then edit the CSS files (and page.tpl.php file if necessary) to customize it to match your design.
If you don't know CSS well, I would suggest you hire someone to do this. You could post in the Paid Services forum to find someone.
HTH.
Starter theme
Or use a starter theme which can give you a flying head start.
Need help with IE?
Learn basic XHTML and CSS first.
Get smart with web specs.
Pimp your Drupal 8 Toolbar - make it badass.
Adaptivetheme - theming system for people who don't code.
custom home page?
One final question (hopefully) -- how hard is it to have a custom HOME PAGE and CMS-driven internal pages? My client won't need to edit the content of the home page and therefore I would like to be able to design it in any way that I like (in pure HTML with no PHP), but the client wants to be able to edit the internal pages herself, and therefore she wants to use a CMS.
Assuming I am an expert in HTML and know nothing about PHP (and little about CSS), how hard is this?
Thanks
You may want to check out
You may want to check out the http://drupal.org/project/front module. Also, you can create and style a page-front.tpl.php file (copy the page.tpl.php file from your theme, rename it, and change it however you like).
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"Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime." - Lao Tzu
"God helps those who help themselves." - Ben Franklin
"Search is your best friend." - Worldfallz