Online Portfolio

[Steakpirate]

Are any of you particularly net-savvy? I'm looking for a cheap way of putting together a good looking portfolio site for my writing.

 

I'm looking into a few different Content Management Systems, but so far haven't had the chance to play around with many.

I'd prefer it not to be Wordpress, which I loathe with a fiery passion. Perhaps something Made to do websites and portfolios?

I'm willing to expend monetary resources provided I am able to manage the site completely on my own.

 

I'm not expecting to get many of these bells and whistles, but ideally, my site would accomplish the following tasks:

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• Allow me to upload a PDF of a document and categorize it by the genre directories available on my site (Narrative, Poetry, Essay, etc.), and have the website automatically build a menu out of the files uploaded, their genres, dates and titles.

 

• It would also be fantastic if I could have the text harvested from the PDF, and spat back out on a page without losing formatting, such that when you clicked a link on the aforementioned menu, it looked like a page had actually been manually created for the document.

 

• The portfolio site would also have an About me-ish page, relavent news articles, and possibly, but not necessarily, links to a blog (ideally a part of the same website/with the same theme)

[emoKid]

If you don't want to use Wordpress, there's Joomla, Textpattern, and Habari.

 

Wordpress would probably be the best for what you described though. I know a couple of writers that use Joomla for their sites though.

 

I don't know of any CMS that imports PDF's and keeps the formatting. Most of the time, people format the content for the CMS, and have the CMS export to PDF.

 

I'd suggest looking at Joomla or Wordpress for what you described.

[Steakpirate]

If you don't want to use Wordpress, there's Joomla, Textpattern, and Habari.

 

Wordpress would probably be the best for what you described though. I know a couple of writers that use Joomla for their sites though.

 

I don't know of any CMS that imports PDF's and keeps the formatting. Most of the time, people format the content for the CMS, and have the CMS export to PDF.

 

I'd suggest looking at Joomla or Wordpress for what you described.

 

 

I'm not expecting that particular functionality out of the box (though it would be amazing), and I've looked for Wordpress plugins that do it to no avail. Realistically, that'd be a plugin I'd end up paying someone to code it or piece it together myself out of opensource code, regardless of which CMS I end up using.

 

I think my main goal is to find a CMS that is easy to design nice themes / a custom website inside of. For WP theme creation, some degree of technical wizardry is required. My primary beef with WP is merely the difficulty of getting it to stop looking like a blog; as even the themes for other things feel wrong to me.

 

What would be perfect would be a more high-tech version of iWeb with customizable stock themes, and which was an online CMS for management purposes.

 

 

I've considered coming up with money to just pay someone to design it, but that may require a great deal of research on my part into what the site should look like.

 

My brain associates Joomla with ugly high-school class sites for grade tracking, because that's what my teachers used to use it for, but I'll definitely give it a look. I've fooled around with several CMS already, but it's usually time consuming and a pain to set them all up with a free hosting site to try out.

 

Thanks for your input!

[marguerite]

I'm not expecting that particular functionality out of the box (though it would be amazing), and I've looked for Wordpress plugins that do it to no avail. Realistically, that'd be a plugin I'd end up paying someone to code it or piece it together myself out of opensource code, regardless of which CMS I end up using.

 

I think my main goal is to find a CMS that is easy to design nice themes / a custom website inside of. For WP theme creation, some degree of technical wizardry is required. My primary beef with WP is merely the difficulty of getting it to stop looking like a blog; as even the themes for other things feel wrong to me.

 

What would be perfect would be a more high-tech version of iWeb with customizable stock themes, and which was an online CMS for management purposes.

 

 

I've considered coming up with money to just pay someone to design it, but that may require a great deal of research on my part into what the site should look like.

 

My brain associates Joomla with ugly high-school class sites for grade tracking, because that's what my teachers used to use it for, but I'll definitely give it a look. I've fooled around with several CMS already, but it's usually time consuming and a pain to set them all up with a free hosting site to try out.

 

Thanks for your input!

My son bought hosting through GoDaddy, although I think he used DreamWeaver to create the actual site. Not the cheapest route, for sure, but at least it gives you reasonable levels of control and stability. I'm assuming that free solutions like Google Apps are not high-powered enough for you?

Wildly out of my depth here,

M

[codemer]

I'm not expecting that particular functionality out of the box (though it would be amazing), and I've looked for Wordpress plugins that do it to no avail. Realistically, that'd be a plugin I'd end up paying someone to code it or piece it together myself out of opensource code, regardless of which CMS I end up using.

 

I think my main goal is to find a CMS that is easy to design nice themes / a custom website inside of. For WP theme creation, some degree of technical wizardry is required. My primary beef with WP is merely the difficulty of getting it to stop looking like a blog; as even the themes for other things feel wrong to me.

 

What would be perfect would be a more high-tech version of iWeb with customizable stock themes, and which was an online CMS for management purposes.

 

 

I've considered coming up with money to just pay someone to design it, but that may require a great deal of research on my part into what the site should look like.

 

My brain associates Joomla with ugly high-school class sites for grade tracking, because that's what my teachers used to use it for, but I'll definitely give it a look. I've fooled around with several CMS already, but it's usually time consuming and a pain to set them all up with a free hosting site to try out.

 

Thanks for your input!

 

So, are you looking for a host, a CMS, or both? I'm pretty happy Dreamhost's service and available web apps. PM me if you want a coupon code. I was *not* happy when I used GoDaddy years ago.

 

Before you pay a web designer, try to flesh out the content of the site. It's not worth spending money on a fancy layout if you do not have enough content to fill it out.

 

IF

[emoKid]

If you're up for working together on creating something, I can help.

 

From what you're talking about, it might be easy to use something like GluePHP to handle parts of it (instead of a full-fledged CMS). If you don't plan on having user registration and user levels and whatnot, then it'd probably be easyish to setup.

 

The only issue I have is the PDF stuff. I don't have experience on interacting with PDF's and PHP because a lot of web hosts don't support it by default (so that's something to check before diving in). I know a few hosts like webFaction, sliceHost, LinNode, and etc. will allow you to install your own software to use.

[Steakpirate]

If you're up for working together on creating something, I can help.

 

From what you're talking about, it might be easy to use something like GluePHP to handle parts of it (instead of a full-fledged CMS). If you don't plan on having user registration and user levels and whatnot, then it'd probably be easyish to setup.

 

The only issue I have is the PDF stuff. I don't have experience on interacting with PDF's and PHP because a lot of web hosts don't support it by default (so that's something to check before diving in). I know a few hosts like webFaction, sliceHost, LinNode, and etc. will allow you to install your own software to use.

 

I'll take a look and let you know, thanks! The PDF thing just stemmed from my epiphany that it would be really spiffy if you could read my stories in my portfolio within my site, and how fantastic it would be if I could easily achieve that functionality without manually formating each story.

[Steakpirate]

If you're up for working together on creating something, I can help.

 

From what you're talking about, it might be easy to use something like GluePHP to handle parts of it (instead of a full-fledged CMS). If you don't plan on having user registration and user levels and whatnot, then it'd probably be easyish to setup.

 

The only issue I have is the PDF stuff. I don't have experience on interacting with PDF's and PHP because a lot of web hosts don't support it by default (so that's something to check before diving in). I know a few hosts like webFaction, sliceHost, LinNode, and etc. will allow you to install your own software to use.

 

I'll take a look and let you know, thanks! The PDF thing just stemmed from my epiphany that it would be really spiffy if you could read my stories in my portfolio within my site's theme, and how fantastic it would be if I could easily achieve that functionality without manually formating each story.