Let’s get this out of the way before we begin; though I work for GavickPro, a leading WordPress and Joomla template and extension developer, I know nothing about WordPress. Or Joomla. Or HTML, CSS; PHP or Javascript. I don’t know the difference between a module and an extension, and I think a widget is something you’ll find in a can of John Smith’s. This doesn’t really bode well for my attempts to get started with creating a site, but I’m determined to get myself a working idea of what we actually do. I’ll be writing about my experiences here, both to let other newbies know that they’re not alone, and also so that when I am a web-development master I can sit upon my throne marveling at how far I’ve come (web-developers have thrones, right?).
Unpopular though the stance is in the fast-moving modern world, I consider myself a bit of a ‘measure twice, cut once’ kind of guy; I don’t like to just jump in and start messing around. I crave information; I collect it and weigh up all the options, then I disregard them and just go with my gut instinct. Then I spend the next few days regretting my decision, but that’s not the point! The point is, I need to get some more grounding on what WordPress and Joomla do, and more importantly, which one is more suited to the ludicrous flailing that my attempts to use it will bring.
A Wizard Did It
Wikipedia, that ever present source of knowledge on even the most trivial things, is usually a good first start when you need to know more about something. I say “usually” because it’s a rule that only applies to general topics. Once I start trying to get some info on the sciences, the level of jargon increases exponentially until eventually I’m opening a new tab to get help explaining the first sentence of the previous tab, so I’m going to have to look elsewhere for this kind of information.
Talking with experts on a subject can be a trying task at first; they spend so long working with other experts that it takes them a while before they return back to earth and start speaking understandable, jargon-free English. So it was with our resident technical expert, Dziudek. He seems to know everything there is to know about WordPress and Joomla, so it felt like a good starting point. I put some questions to him; “What do WordPress and Joomla actually do?”, “Which one is better for a total noob?”. His answer was detailed, technically-flawless, and complete and utter gibberish to my ears. After I made it clear that I had no idea what he was talking about, I was able to bring him down a level or twenty so that he started speaking like a human being.
Down the Rabbit Hole
So, let’s break down what I found out; WordPress and Joomla are CMSs, which stands for Content Management System. These perform an awful lot of tasks and functions, most of which are not clear to me as yet, but the main thing is that they take the sting out of building a website. Instead of learning how to code everything from scratch, the CMS does all the heavy lifting in the background and provides a nice interface for adding articles, images and the like so you can focus on writing content. Themes and templates give the site a nice visual aesthetic, and plugins, modules, widgets or extensions provide extra bonus functions, like slideshows, backups; kind of like a program on your computer.
As to whether WordPress or Joomla is best for me? Dziudek wasn’t ready to commit to one over the other, so it falls to me to rely on good old Google for my answer. This could get messy, so stand back:
Alrighty, I consulted the wide-open forum that is the internet at large; believe it or not, despite the amount of people claiming to be experts on everything from molecular biology to literature and everything in between, there’s also quite a few newbies like myself asking exactly the same question. After filtering out the profanity, spam and cries of ‘entitled generation’ (seriously, when did that become a thing?) the online community seemed to reach a consensus; WordPress is easier for absolute beginners, but worse than Joomla! if you’re looking to go more in-depth. Since whenever I go in-depth something ends up on fire, I should probably stick with WordPress for now.
Getting a Grip
Now I’ve got the basics sorted out, it’s time to look at actually installing one of our themes. Our website notes that you can go from nothing to fully-installed in 15 minutes using the quickstart package for each theme, but I’m sure it’s not as easy as that. We’ve got some rather useful guides to help people like me get started in our documentation, so let’s give it a go. A quick search brings me to the WordPress quickstart installation guide; excellent, let’s take a look:
- First, download the quickstart package. I’ll go with our free Magazine WordPress theme to start with.
- Next, extract the zip package locally; now this I can do!
- Then, upload the extracted folder to your server or localhost…prepare database…
I think I may have missed something important here. It never occurred to me that I might need a server to build a site, since I’m just going to be practicing. It sounds silly now that I think about it, but I’m so used to working locally that I just didn’t consider the actual logistics of building a website in practice. I’m also entirely unfamiliar with the idea of the database; I mean, I know what a database is as a concept, but I’m not sure what it’s relation is to WordPress or web-development in general. I think I’m going to have to do a little more Google-fu to help dig out how I can go about creating a website on my home computer.
After a lot of digging, I think I’ve finally cracked it. Though it doesn’t seem possible to install WordPress on a local computer, you can install a what is, for all intents and purposes, a pretend server that will work like a server you purchase from a hosting company. Using this, you can install WordPress and play around with it without even being online, which is just what I need; the further I am from civilization when trying to get something working, the safer everyone will be. As for the database; this seems to be used to store (…wait for it…) data. Specifically, all the stuff external to the basic functions of WordPress itself, like users, posts, categories etc…Of course, it’s much more complex than that, but for now let’s pretend that a database is just a big electronic filing cabinet and we’ll all get along just fine.
I discovered that there are plenty of programs that can create the ‘pretend’ server and database for you, and for some reason all of them have an obsession with amps; MAMP, LAMP, WAMP, XAMPP. There is an explanation for this of course, but it doesn’t really mean much for us newbies; the ‘AMP’ is actually an acronym for Apache, MySQL and PHP. Or Apache, MariaDB and Perl. Or Apache, MongoDB and Python. Basically, it can mean a whole lot of different things, so don’t think about it too much! Actually setting up the server is easier, thankfully; just a regular program install that takes care of most things automatically. Since I’m currently working on a Mac, I’ll be going with MAMP (the ‘M’ stands for Mac; that one caught me off guard).
At times like this a good guide can make all the difference, and the WordPress Codex delivers on this point. It’s a rather spiffing resource that seems to cover everything about WordPress from basic settings to development, so I imagine I’ll be spending a lot of time there. There MAMP install guide was easy enough for me to follow, and one quick install later I’ve got a server ready and created a database. What happens is, a folder on my computer works as my imaginary server’s root, and MAMP will treat everything I stick in this folder just as it would if it was on a ‘real’ server. Which is great; it means I can skip all sorts of there things like FTP-ing and C-Panel-ing and whatnot that a real server would entail.
After installing and starting MAMP, I need to actually start stuffing my server with content. Looking back at the aforementioned quickstart installation guide, I can now safely move on to the third step:
- FTP the extracted folder’s contents to your server.
Since I’m too stingy to pay for a server, all I need to do is drag and drop the extracted files into my fake server’s root folder. Next step; open my browser to the server’s root, which in this case would be ‘localhost:8888’ to start the install. This step isn’t hard, but it is slightly perturbing for a lifelong Windows user; installations have always been about double-clicking and installation wizards, so just sticking the files on a server seems slightly out of place. Still, it’s comforting to know that servers essentially work like any other file structure; folders within folders, files all over the place. It’s messy, but familiar.
Opening my browser to my localhost brings up the WordPress installation screen. Most of the options seem relatively simple; site name, administrator details, database details. The whole install goes smoothly and takes just a couple of minutes, and that’s including me double-checking my database details over and over to make sure I enter them correctly. Once done, it gives me a link to the login screen, I complete the credentials and – success! – I reach the WordPress administration panel. There are a lot of options and it all seems a bit bewildering, but for now I’m interested in one thing; does my site look good?
I highlight the website name at the top of the screen, and it rather prophetically brings up a ‘Visit Site’ option. I click through and…
No Harm Done
Surprisingly, the site looks great! In fact, it perfectly matches the live demo from Gavick.com. Everything seems in order, nothing is on fire; that’s a pretty good start for a newbie of my limited calibre. I play around for a few minutes, checking that nothing is missing. Nope, everything seems fine. I must admit, I’m feeling a little bit proud of myself now, despite my total contribution to my site’s development consisting of ‘download, unpack, upload, click’. Of course, the install is the easy part; now it’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty and actually start playing around with what WordPress has to offer…
But that’s for another time; now all I have enough energy for is a cup of tea and a couple of paracetamol.