By aweaver on

Hi Guys,

I`m fairly new to web design and I`m looking for some advice for the situation I`m in.

I currently have a Drupal site running that was built by a friend of my ex-girlfriend; it was a bad idea from the start on both fronts.

I`m wondering what I need to do; what information do I need to obtain &/or change on my site? I'm not too worried about anything malicious happening, but I'm wondering what I should do to take control/ownership of this site. It is owned by my company (essentially me) and I don't ever expect to have the original developer do any more work on the site, and I don't have a new developer lined up (nor can I really afford one).

The site runs fine. It's 6 or 8 pages. I have the ability to sign in on the back-end and add/manage content. I essentially built the site you see myself; the developer was the one that built the frame and takes care of the hosting (third party), and managed Drupal updates and small design issues that were over my head. Now I'm hoping that some people here can help guide me as I stumble my way to understanding Drupal.

At the same time, I'm starting to fool around with Dreamweaver CS4. I've used Photoshop and Illustrator for quite a few years now, but I find myself wanting the ability to build webpages, so I thought I'd take it on. I have a basic understanding of HTML and I'm confident that I can pick up enough basic skills to get me started.

So, my second question; how bad an idea is it for me to try and begin managing my site with Dreamweaver? Last thing I want to do is have this thing go down and have to spend a couple days trying to figure out how to get it back up (or, more likely, have to pay the original designer, or find someone new). Ideally, I'd like to do it to understand how to; I'd like to run a couple of unpublished pages and have the ability to turn them on in the future, if I can get them where I want them.

Is this a dangerous road to travel, or am I relatively safe to fool around with stuff? And how do I take my site back?

Thanks for any insight you guys can provide.

Regards,

Andrew

⋅ Categories: Drupal 6.x

Comments

vm’s picture

vm commented

you need the server username and password
the database username and password (in settings.php)

your FTP username and password, I'd change them all

dreamweaver is not the tool to be used with drupal. IMHO, a text editor that handles sytax highlighting is all you need.

aweaver’s picture

aweaver commented

Thanks VM.

My problem with Drupal is that the WYSIWYG editor that was setup for me doesn't seem to function all that competently (TinyMCE I believe). I was told that this was just the way it is and that I needed to know more HTML to do what I want to do.

My attraction to Dreamweaver is that it will take care of most of the code for me and seems to have a pretty rich set of features. The new pages that I'm trying to do are essentially the ecommerce side of our site. We currently use a third party site for selling product, but we'd like to do a sample/trial offer to start generating better traffic and build a loyal online customer base for this product. My plan is to setup a 2 page process; basically a landing page to pitch the product and get people to sign up for the free trial, and then a shopping cart to take care of shipping costs and upsells.

I've tried to copy and paste HTML from DW to Drupal, but it doesn't seem to be that easy. If I could build a page in DW and continue updating a page on my site, that would be cool.

Any other software to make this easier on me? What I'm trying to do is fairly basic. I could probably get away with using the TinyMCE editor and designing everything in Photoshop and Illustrator; we're looking at using 1shoppingcart.com for the sales part.

What is the thought process behind Drupal? I don't think I entirely understand it for what it is. Is DW just bad software, or is it better suited for other web formats? I was sold on Drupal for it's functionality and ability to adapt; that said, I don't understand why it has these characteristics over something else (what do you you use if you're not using Drupal?).

Feel free to point me at links and literature; I've done some digging on my own, but its hard to get answers to specific questions.

Andrew

vm’s picture

vm commented

DW like FrontPage does things in their own sort of way.

I don't use embedded editors like TinyMCE or the like either.

You learn HTML by typing it and studying it not by clicking buttons.

aweaver’s picture

aweaver commented

Ya. It's a good point, and one I'm well aware of. Tends to be the way with most things. I actually spend a lot of time looking at the code behind the design in DW for that reason; still, no way to learn. Kinda like reading the answers in the back of the textbook and thinking you understand the material.

So, in that case, can you suggest a simple, free, editor (and debugger?) that I should use? Do I go ftp to upload the code? Is this a fairly simple setup process where I can start playing around with an unpublished page, on the site I'm currently running?

This seems like the hard way (be it the right way or not). What percentage of the Drupal population do you think use stuff like FP and DW? Are they popular? I see a lot of links for troubleshooting shooting them; makes me think they're trouble.

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

I have to agree with VM-- DW is definitely not a tool to use with drupal. DW is aimed at building the complete website-- not pieces of it the way you're doing by adding drupal to the mix. They're almost, but not quite, mutually exclusive. That said, you could use a simple html editor and copy and paste the HTML between the <body> tags into a drupal page but that's not really ideal either.

When I work on a site i enter the html myself, but I have setup the http://drupal.org/project/fckeditor module for use by others and it works well. Another option is the http://drupal.org/project/wysiwyg editor which supports a number of different editor interfaces.

However, they aren't really 'wysiwyg' like you're used to with a word processing program. Appearance on a web page is ultimately controlled by css and the different editors will have differing levels of success implementing that. I often find the fact that they appear to be wysiwyg but aren't to be more confusing for users, ymmv. You might want to checkout the http://drupal.org/project/bueditor module -- its an html helper editor.

Also, before attempting to integrate a completely separate product for ecommerce, you should at least consider one of the drupal ecommerce suites (http://drupal.org/project/ubercart & http://drupal.org/project/ecommerce). Adding 3rd party integration is just another level of complexity best avoided whenever possible.

aweaver’s picture

aweaver commented

Cool. Thanks for the advice.

I was initially looking at ZenCart, but we were waiting for an update (which I think has arrived).

My problem is that I'm pretty picky with how it works. It needs to take info on page one (name,address,email,phone) and walk them into a shopping cart for shipping and credit card info on page 2.

1shoppingcart seems like a nice all in one solution that lets us auto email existing customers, and follow-up on lost sales.

Anythink on Drupal that has an interface like that, or it that all stuff I build?

Andrew

WorldFallz’s picture

WorldFallz commented

Both the drupal ecommerce modules are extremely well done, used by many, and have the added advantage of being completely part of drupal. Anything you don't get out of the box can be created I'm sure-- and you'd only have to learn 1 thing: drupal. Once you start mixing and matching 3rd party apps you're at their mercy-- you'd have to learn how to customize drupal as well as the other scripts. Why not just learn one thing and learn it well?

marita93’s picture

marita93 commented

I have written a listener from 1shopping cart..... just a simple one for a membership site. Let me know if you are interested in it still.