Minimum Website Requirements

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Pooky

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I'm making a website for someone, and I am going to be trying with Joomla as a frontend type thing, and also a Wordpress blog for the owner to update on their organisation's activities.

They, through someone they know's company, have got a domain name and hosting, thing is, there is no cpanel or anything on the site, I only have an ftp server to upload to.

What do I need to upload there apart from Joomla, and Wordpress, and how do I make sure it all works together?
 
Pooky said:
I'm making a website for someone, and I am going to be trying with Joomla as a frontend type thing, and also a Wordpress blog for the owner to update on their organisation's activities.

They, through someone they know's company, have got a domain name and hosting, thing is, there is no cpanel or anything on the site, I only have an ftp server to upload to.

What do I need to upload there apart from Joomla, and Wordpress, and how do I make sure it all works together?
Click to expand...

Hi Pooky - Have you looked at our Wordpress Hosting Package? http://www.gridhost.co.za/wordpress-blog-hosting
 
Gridhost-Muzz said:
Hi Pooky - Have you looked at our Wordpress Hosting Package? http://www.gridhost.co.za/wordpress-blog-hosting
Click to expand...

Yeah I know about those packages, I am going to be using your special for my personal site when I can think of a domain name (THE HARDEST THING).

Thing is, the person's friend has provided them with free hosting, and there is no cpanel to auto install everything. I don't have a problem with installing things via ftp, I'm just not sure apart from Joomla and Wordpress, what needs to be installed.
 
Pooky said:
Yeah I know about those packages, I am going to be using your special for my personal site when I can think of a domain name (THE HARDEST THING).

Thing is, the person's friend has provided them with free hosting, and there is no cpanel to auto install everything. I don't have a problem with installing things via ftp, I'm just not sure apart from Joomla and Wordpress, what needs to be installed.
Click to expand...

You would definitely need to have PHPMYADMIN in order to make life easier for this sort of thing - Otherwise, you can create databases and tables from the command line, but it's not recommended :-)
 
Assuming you have access to phpMyAdmin to create a database, create a database, do a manual install for Joomla & maybe look at "Wordpress Blog for Joomla" (it's commercial) but there are non-commercial blogging components.

If he is updating organization activities surely this can be done in Joomla? Why use the Joomla & Wordpress?

Otherwise you would need to separate the Joomla & Wordpress into appropriate locations/directories so they don't clash.
 
Odin Outline said:
Assuming you have access to phpMyAdmin to create a database, create a database, do a manual install for Joomla & maybe look at "Wordpress Blog for Joomla" (it's commercial) but there are non-commercial blogging components.

If he is updating organization activities surely this can be done in Joomla? Why use the Joomla & Wordpress?

Otherwise you would need to separate the Joomla & Wordpress into appropriate locations/directories so they don't clash.
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I was thinking the Wordpress has great themes and is really easy for someone who doesn't know much about the internet at all, and then Joomla can be the part of the site which is fairly static. Stuff like contact forms, about us... etc.

Do I need to install PHPmyAdmin? Is this like the same as MySQL ?>
 
Sounds great about the themes, but aren't you going to be stuck with to different sites (look & feel) Wordpress theme & Joomla theme (if not the same)?

If their friend is providing them with free hosting, surely they must have some kind of control panel other than cPanel?

Perhaps check with the friend what versions of PHP & MySQL his servers are running (this will answer alot)

He would need to carry out any installs on the server or at-least request them to install anything missing from the above.

If they offer hosting there has to be some room for light i.e. running the mentioned services....
 
Sorry, but it seems you are installing 2 CMSs to be able to do what either one can handle on their own. WordPress (particularly 3.x) can handle the static stuff as well, and Joomla has blogging modules too. Rather stick to one CMS - it's easier to install, maintain, theme, support....
 
Odin Outline said:
Sounds great about the themes, but aren't you going to be stuck with to different sites (look & feel) Wordpress theme & Joomla theme (if not the same)?

If their friend is providing them with free hosting, surely they must have some kind of control panel other than cPanel?

Perhaps check with the friend what versions of PHP & MySQL his servers are running (this will answer alot)

He would need to carry out any installs on the server or at-least request them to install anything missing from the above.

If they offer hosting there has to be some room for light i.e. running the mentioned services....
Click to expand...

I see your point. :)

Okay maybe I shall stick to one.

I will ask if there is any form of control panel.
 
To be honest you don't need any control panel. You could simply ask for a database to be setup for you, get a username and password (and host of the database if it is on another server) and then follow the quick WordPress install. Personally I would go with WordPress as it handles static pages and has many plugins that can handle things like contact forms etc.
 
+1 for wordpress if you're just wanting to do static pages and a blog.
they also have a contact form plugin, have no fear.
wordpress' general install and update functionality is dead easy for first-timers.
give it a try, it won't take long to set up.
 
Odin Outline said:
So you've checked & they don't have a control panel, php or sql services ??
Click to expand...

I originally was sent an email with just an ftp login. I sent an email to ask if there was a control panel, but I think the guy is away so I am still waiting....
 
psd to html

Hello, it is a thundering posting as the real web design clue. Minimum requirements of website design & development parts are psd to html templates creation for every home or inner pages that may be for the static or dynamic website. Slicing PSD file and generating HTML is the preliminary execution for the web design and both combination give a web full perfection.
 
The control panel is more of a nicety that professional hosts use to reduce their support requests and support staff. You shouldn't really need it though. What you will need is a server with a whole pile of software, which also has to be properly configured.

At a minimum you will need:

A *nix distro (Linux, FreeBSD, etc)
Apache
PHP 5
MySQL

If they use a Windows based server JUST SAY NO!!! After a week of fighting you will want to kill yourself trying to run PHP based software on a IIS server. It's just not practical. You should be able to tell from logging into the FTP though.

If they have all the above software though you still have to hope they are configured correctly to run Joomla, etc. The default PHP install comes with settings that most scripts don't like (or are just not that secure) so you have to tweak them quite a bit to run things.

MySQL can be set up with phpmysqladmin (it's just a script that you install, relatively easy setup as well). You will just need a password.

Joomla and Wordpress then just have to be extracted, uploaded via FTP, and have their config files edited/ install scripts run. Read their INSTALL files though.

To be honest though this type of hosting sounds like a disaster. Unless the server admin turns out to be really good this is just not worth the effort (cheap Linux hosting is what, R50 a month?). There are other issues here, such as uptime, backup and redundancy which professionals can do better.
 
Well off the bat you may be better finding a host that at-least replies to emails, it's not sounding like you will receive much support if you require it.
 
Lol yeah this wasn't my idea. The person's friend is doing her a favour by hosting it for free and everything. I don't have any say in the matter.

I have managed to find out that the control panel is HELM, which I believe is Windows based... So where does that leave me?

I'm trying to find out the password to log in.
 
Well atleast you will be able to manage via the control panel at some point.

Why not upload Joomla or Wordpress (you probably wont be able to extract a compressed folder at this point) if you have the time upload & carry out an install.
Not sure about Wordpress but Joomla will let you know if there are any issues during the install.
 
If it's Windows-based hosting try to find out what version of Windows Server it's running, the version of .net and the version/ type of database (MSSQL 2000/2005/2008 or MySQL). From there I would suggest looking at alternate CMS's based on the .net platform (Wikipedia has a nice list, I like mojoPortal for it's backend - it's CSS is slightly wacky though).

BUT, developing layouts for different CMS platforms takes a bit of adjusting so it might not be worth your time to learn a whole new skill set for one project.

Hence, my first suggestion would be to go with paid hosting on a decent provider.
 
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