Norphy Posted March 23, 2006 Posted March 23, 2006 Its going to sound terrible this... It isn't meant to cause offence....BUT Having had a look at several of the websites showcased on this site it is fairly clear that as a whole us techies are generaly CRAP at design! I wonder if its just that it is rare to be very visually creative and very techy at the same time? Pete I completely agree with you. I'm a perfectly adept techie but am hopeless at design and documentation.
alan-d Posted March 24, 2006 Posted March 24, 2006 Its going to sound terrible this... It isn't meant to cause offence....BUT Having had a look at several of the websites showcased on this site it is fairly clear that as a whole us techies are generaly CRAP at design! Pete very true I have the ideas etc but not the talent with graphics packages to put them in place. Frustrating
Simcfc73 Posted March 24, 2006 Author Posted March 24, 2006 Its going to sound terrible this... It isn't meant to cause offence....BUT Having had a look at several of the websites showcased on this site it is fairly clear that as a whole us techies are generaly CRAP at design! I wonder if its just that it is rare to be very visually creative and very techy at the same time? Pete Yes I agree. Its weird how I can take a perfectly nice template which looks very professional and put my stuff on it and make it look rubbish. I've found a nice one now so I am doing another version. Thanks to the people who offered help.
pshuttle Posted March 24, 2006 Posted March 24, 2006 Anyway it all depends what you mean by good design. If you just after eye candy with lots of showy Flash animations and convoluted navigation then yes perhaps eduGeeks are lacking. Well I do not see any good reason why a good functional (and technically very sophisticated) website should be visually poor/amatuerish. After all - lots of effort is often put into the backend! Perhaps we should hire some graphic designers for the CSS and layout hehe - do you think the school budget would stretch that far ? Pete
pcprofessor Posted March 24, 2006 Posted March 24, 2006 On the topic of layout, I came across a great Open Source package for doing a blog style website called edupress. It's a doddle to download and install, but needs a server with Mysql and for a beginner (obviously not you lot) cpanel. Apparently it's a cut down version of wordpress. For an example of what it looks like have a look at http://thepcprofessor.co.uk/edupress You manage everything online so don't need ftp (except possibly to upload it in the first instance).
Guest Posted March 24, 2006 Posted March 24, 2006 Why not get someone from the Art dept to knock up a design? Better yet have a competition.
beeswax Posted March 24, 2006 Posted March 24, 2006 "Perhaps we should hire some graphic designers for the CSS and layout hehe - do you think the school budget would stretch that far" I had just this conversation with our Head the other day until I told him how much a private company I used to work for had charged a school. He wished me luck. The site's almost done and can be found here you can't link to anything yet, but you'll get the idea. The biggest problem is getting information from heads of faculty.
Guest Posted March 24, 2006 Posted March 24, 2006 Not to shabby beeswax. Love the header. Nice clean simple template. One thing i would add, and its just my opinion. Make the School Achievement logos a bit smaller and better spaced and maybe link to their websites.
MkII Posted March 24, 2006 Posted March 24, 2006 On the topic of layout, I came across a great Open Source package for doing a blog style website called edupress. It's a doddle to download and install, but needs a server with Mysql and for a beginner (obviously not you lot) cpanel. Apparently it's a cut down version of wordpress. For an example of what it looks like have a look at http://thepcprofessor.co.uk/edupress You manage everything online so don't need ftp (except possibly to upload it in the first instance). Yes - using it here. It also simplifies the interface so that even my IT Co-Ord can use it. Mind you, he still has the odd problem. Techs doing design - of course we mustn't generalise I went to art college, and although I don't think i'm proficient at web design yet I have qualifications to say I have some sort of aesthetic sense. Like anything web design is a specialism. We are ahead of the game when it comes to understanding the medium. That doesn't make us instant geniuses tho'. IT covers so many disciplines and as a one man band we in schools get to try all of them!
webman Posted March 24, 2006 Posted March 24, 2006 The biggest problem is getting information from heads of faculty. Good luck with that. It took me over a year
pshuttle Posted March 24, 2006 Posted March 24, 2006 The site's almost done and can be found here you can't link to anything yet, but you'll get the idea. The biggest problem is getting information from heads of faculty. You have done a great job with that site. Very pleasing. Do not get me wrong there are some of us here who have good design sense (I am going to be arrogant enough to place myself in that capacity being an Amatuer Photographer and Web Designer/Developer - and also loving design). However, I am not nearly as technicaly minded as some of you guys so it is swings and roundabouts...... You just do not seem to see it that often in techies thats all. Pete
webman Posted March 24, 2006 Posted March 24, 2006 I put myself in the "90% technical and 10% design" box
_Bat_ Posted July 5, 2006 Posted July 5, 2006 Sorry to bring up an old thread, but I saw a link to this school site: http://www.emersonvalley.org.uk/test/ There is a calendar on there intergrated with joomla, does anyone know if this is done easily or even if there is a joomla addon for a calendar? I was considering mixing a calendar into the CMS via a frame, but i've tried this with webcalendar in the past and it didn't work.
Guest Posted July 5, 2006 Posted July 5, 2006 Hiya _Bat_ This is very easy to add to any Joomla based site. Just installs like any other component / module. Heres the link http://extensions.joomla.org/component/option,com_mtree/task,viewlink/link_id,96/Itemid,35/ If you have any Q's drop me a PM
_Bat_ Posted September 25, 2006 Posted September 25, 2006 nice theme SYSMAN_MK Can i ask if you made it yourself or not? btw you are required to have the joomla copyright shown i believe - unless you paid for it from them.... or something along those lines. Cheers Nath. I just found something online which is interesting... I don't know if anyone can confirm. Apparently the GNU/GPL doesn't state that the VISIBLE copyright notice on the site has to remain intact. What it does state though is that any copyright notice in the PHP files has to remain. What the user sees isn't the PHP file, but an HTML file generated from the PHP file, so it is fine to edit the copyright out of here. Have a look here: Linky
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