TOPIC: Template help.

Hello,

I tired asking this question over ath the main Joomla! forum but it keeps getting lost in the shuffle of millions of other questions over there and no one has answered a good answer yet. And I tried at the community builder site but it keeps telling me that I need to register to post even though I log in.

This forum and Daniel has always been good to me in answering questions (not to mention the great components that compojoom has!), so I though I would ask this question here and see if I had any luck.



I am in a art group and we all design art. Instead of just letting my art and about twenty of my friends art pieces sit around and collect dust, we would like to sell it for small prices. I am just having a problem with making an easy to use site where all of my friends can log on too and upload both a picture of themselves (kind of like a profile picture of them or whatever they want) and pictures and videos side by side of the art displaying the art and then letting the artist tel about the art and what inspired them, what they were going for, etc.

Please see the attachment .(doc) so you can see what I am going for basically.

I know there has to be a way to do this. I have built a few websites with joomla and I love them. This seems possible, how can I do it? Artsalewebsiteoutline.doc

hey Coms,
Sorry for the delay - somehow I missed this post.

Well, actually I don't really understand what you want to do. There are no specifications such as - who is able to register, what part of the site he will be able to see and what he will be able to do.

I did see your post Coms a few days ago, but I held off replying until I actually had something useful to say.

The kind of site it sounds like you want to do, is fairly complex. I'm sure there are a variety of extensions out there that help do what you want, definately a Community Builder driven site is what you'll need too. Although from first impressions, it'd require a lot of your own custom coding.

Ironically, I want to have a similar thing on my site. I am building a community-driven portal where artists and producers can join and talk on projects or ideas, and my site would provide a haven to accomodate for their required features and also provide the legal security of operating and working under my site name. It's like a social networking site of creative designers, and Photography/Art will be a big aspect of it.

These kinds of questions may be, for the moment, suited to the Community Builder forums. CompoJoom is planning to expand one day as we develop more extensions (Daniel and I have several ideas for future projects we want to create) and when that day comes we look forward to questions like this. Also, posts like yours are very interesting for inspiration/ideas.

I know everything I just said doesn't help you too much, but I thought i'd be polite and throw my two cents in.

Daniel,
Thank you responding I am so happy you did. This seems so simple and it seems that I can do this but I just can't figure out how, but I feel I am getting closer.

I am going to answer your two questions, and offer a little more clarification on what I am gong for, I have also attached a new document that may make things more understandable. I even put hyperlinks within the document to show how the site will work and the flow of it.

Your questions:

who is able to register?

Mainly my friends at first, but eventually once other people find the site then Anyone and everyone can register

what part of the site he will be able to see?

Anyone can see any part of the site, so members of the public can purchase the quality art work without registering.

and what he will be able to do?

To put it in terms that are easy to understand, think if it like a mini, simple facebook but with a slight (simple) twist.

Basically on facebook you can have a profile picture, name and really basic info about you, like age. My site will be a lot simpler than face book though, there will be no wall, apps, games or any of that kind of stuff, there will be NONE of that.

So basically the site will have a picture and name and stuff like that. Like a profile for each person.

Here is the simple twist: Underneath the person's name and information there will be a series of links. Like this:

Art piece 1
art piece 2
art piece 3
art piece 4
art piece 5
etc

From there when a person clicks on one of these hyperlinks a new page will open up within the same window that has both a PICTURE and a VIDEO on the same page.

Please see the attached document for a graphical representation of all of this.

So... How can I do this, any ideas?

Thank you. A lot! ArtsalewebsiteoutlineUpdated.doc

Hey coms,
Let me first make few things clear. You've asked me if you can make this with BiggieSmalls - yep you can, but you can also can make this site with the default joomla template. The template here is just the visual thing, how it works is another story.
Second - yep you can make such site with Joomla. The thing is - how much time are you prepared to invest in it.

I remember 4 years ago, as I started with mambo. I wanted to make a website for photoclub I was part in. I didn't have a xampp server so I manually installed apache, mysql. I was going in the console and writing stuff as mysql -u root -p
then create database blabla. I was really proud of myself
I was all the day installing, deinstalling, deleting files and installing all over again. It takes really a lot of time and experimenting to find the right solution for the problems. Back then I couldn't program so the task was really looking complicated.

Why am I telling you this? I'm telling it to you, because you will really have to invest time(perhaps also money for some extensions) in it. How deep do you really want to go?
Do you really want to do this site, or is this just another idea that went through your head?

This is really complicated and there is no 1,2,3 formula. You will have to do everything yourself, to invest time to learn how those things really work to understand everything you do. If you really want to do this, then I will give you some ideas of extensions that you could use, but you will have to install them and evaluate them yourself

Thank you for responding. I understand what you are saying, I am however very serious about this for a few reasons.

I wanted to ask, would this site be a lot easier to build with the Biggie Smalls template?

If not please let me know the ideas that you speak of. Please.

Thanks.

Coms wrote:

I wanted to ask, would this site be a lot easier to build with the Biggie Smalls template?

Daniel Dimitrov wrote:

You've asked me if you can make this with BiggieSmalls - yep you can, but you can also can make this site with the default joomla template. The template here is just the visual thing, how it works is another story.

May I ask friend - how long have you been using Joomla? Daniels' last post was spot-on. It's a journey and a challenge with every website - Joomla isn't a 1-2-3 step to make a website that you and your clients/users will love, it just provides the foundations and creates the workspace for you.

Joomla... is like a toolbench. And the extensions are the tools. And your imagination are the materials. But your knowledge, skills and hard work are what actually create the new piece of furniture

I have been building my first site for nearly a year now. And I am nowhere near close to having it finished, because I always learn a new thing or realize I have to do something a different way. Joomla makes it look like being a webmaster is easy, but there is a lot of theory behind it if you really want to succeed in cyberspace


Anywho, here is a short list of some Joomla extensions that I think should be on nearly every site because they are so powerful and useful. They might not be to you, but it's always great to discover more:

Community Builder (more capable and flexible) or JomSocial (looks more 'pretty' if you are not willing to design your own templates, but costs money and is not as flexible i'm told)

MetaMod - advanced module placement/visibility depending on rules (Guest/Member Type/ACL, Visitor's Location, Time, many more)

JoomlaPack - Joomla site backup and restore, and moving from one server to another (this one has great support on their forums too)

...well that's actually it so far, the others are just cool things I like that are not too special My advice is to go to extensions.joomla.org/ and just browse - go through every section and read about all the extensions that catch your eye - there is a lot there and it will help.

Also - if you have a question or problem or get an idea, its good to search the entire joomla.org site - so it looks in forums, extension comments, and so on. Do it like this (a google search term):

...I found many useful tips and answers like that

Jonus,
I have been using joomla for a little over a year now. I have built five websites with joomla, most simple, some not so simple and pretty complicated.

I have a decent idea of how to modify some php and html but not a really deep knowlege. Usually when something comes up I can figure it out or post a forum question and get the answer I need eventually.

I thought I would ask Daniel because he is very very helpful and has helped me out in the past many times.
Daniel Rocks!

I really appreciate the advice on those extensions. I already use community builder and I like it. I will look into those other extensions.

My layout for this website seems so simple and not really all that difficult. Jonus and Daniel did you actually download the .doc attachment?

Again Jonus I appreciate the ideas and feedback, and extension ideas. I will look into them, I am also interested in seeing what extensions Daniel was going to recommend, Daniel is a guru and I am interested in any short cuts he can provide.

Thanks.

Haha yeah, I asked Daniel the same thing Coms not only is he a guru, but he is very nice to share his experience!

I did do a quick scan through the business brief - but by the time I commented I couldn't remember it but I hope my limited contribution helped a tiny bit! I apologize if it seemed like I was intruding friend.

Jonus you are always welcome to comment At the end I see you as my student and one day the student becomes better than the master - that is the natural flow of the things

Coms from what you wrote I understand that you want a community type of site - community builder is the first choice in such case. There are also some extensions for community builder that allow to have subscriptions.

Actually I think that CB should do the work.
You can publish a list from all the artist with CB(there was also an option to show the avatar of the user in the list).
So when someone clicks on the name, he will go to the artist profile.

I'm sure that you know how a standard cb installation looks - here is what you will have to tweak - the cb template.
You can show the user picture - the info on the right and below in tabs the arts.

There was a gallery plugin for CB, so they should be able to upload easily their works.

I remember that you wrote that you also want to sell the pieces through the website. How is this going to work? Are you going to be the only one who will add the arts to some kind of online shop, or everyone of the artists should be able to say - I want to sell this picture???

Daniel Dimitrov wrote:

Jonus you are always welcome to comment At the end I see you as my student and one day the student becomes better than the master - that is the natural flow of the things

Aha - what an honor We are all students at something!

Actually I think that CB should do the work.

I agree. I've trialed JomSocial, Joomunity and JCommunity - I personally think JCommunity is the better of the alternatives - but CB still seems to be the most flexible with extra work. Plus it's free of course