Rhetorical Analysis
Rhetorical Analysis Scott Miller
All things considered, I think my site turned out pretty well. Unfortunately I had road blocks the entire process, namely my host, Godaddy.com. First of all, it took Godaddy almost 48 hours to get my site online. Once it was online, it would work/be accessible for about 10 minutes, then it would go offline for about 10 more minutes. A never ending cycle of on and off line. In addition to this, Godaddy put a 30 second timeout limit on every time I accessed the server. Since the server was slow to begin with, I could virtually do nothing. Components and modules would not load, Pictures would not load, and simply navigating around the site would “time it out.” My problems were only accentuated by the fact that this semester is so short. If this were a normal semester I could have simply switched hosts and everything would be fine. Yesterday, less than 24 hours away from the due date for our site, I could literally do nothing in Joomla. Casey was nice enough to let me use his hosting for Joomla to complete my project. This meant I had to start from scratch and completely start my site over.
Hosting issues aside, the construction of the site went fairly smoothly. Most of the components I installed, (or at least the ones I could reinstall in configure in the last 24 hours), went very well and were a breeze to set up. The backup program JoomlaPack is very effective and easy to use. Also, it helped that I was making a website for my band so collecting content was very easy. I had all the multimedia I could use as well as articles / blogs at my disposal. This being the case, I decided to build the skeletal structure of the site first, then insert the content last. This seemed to be quite time effective.
In the future there are a few things I will change when making CMS websites. First and foremost, if at all possible, I will give myself more time to work on the site. When we first started with Joomla, I realized how easy and intuitive it was to use. Unfortunately, I thought that would equate to less time spent building my site. I got everything I wanted to accomplish done, but it was a little crammed toward the end, especially when I had to rebuild the entire site in less than 24 hours. Also, I will give myself a little more time to evaluate components, etc., or configure them. There were a few, for example a Facebook plugin, that seemed like a good idea at the time, but after configuring it and putting it on the site, did not work out at all.
This was a very insightful and surprisingly fun assignment. It taught me skills I will need to continue in the web development field. Before this class, I did not know that CMS’s existed. At that point, I was already starting to feel overwhelmed with the strict HTML/CSS approach to making websites, which can be very tedious and time-consuming. After going through this 10 day CMS boot camp, I am feeling much more comfortable and knowledgeable with my web development skills.
Go Daddy is the worst
I’m stating the obvious here, but Godaddy.com is arguably the worst hosting ever. I’ve had nothing but problems with them from day 1. For some reason my website, www.poneyrock.com, and Joomla, would only work for a few minutes at a time. I thought this would work itself out with time, but it didn’t. I contemplated switching to a different host, but considering the short amount of time we have in this class, I decided against that.
I called Godaddy and talked to some southerner guy who claimed that the reason I was having problems was because the server here at school was throttling me back. Many people in the class think that is a BS answer. It doesn’t even make sense considering nearly everyone else in the class in using Joomla and no one has this problem. I plan on using this website for a good while so as soon as this class is over, I am definately switching hosts. Casey was nice enough to let me us his hosting until I turn in my project. I really thought I was SOL there for awhile….
Drupal
Today I got a chance to get some hands on experience with Drupal. Granted, I only spend about a half hour poking around on it / getting to use some of the features, I really do not like this CMS. My biggest complaint is the integration of the actual site you are building, and the means you are using to build it. In other words, it is very easy to “float” in and out of the administer option. In contrast, for Joomla there is one very distinct part of the CMS used to edit the content / options and another very distinct part to preview the site. Whereas in Drupal, the editing and previewing are intertwined and it is very easy to get confused as to where you are.
On the other hand, I will “give props” to Drupal for all of the options / site customization. Drupal seems much more expansive and customizable. Also, it seems that many of the options that you would need to add a module or component in Joomla, are already installed in Drupal. This is very pronounced in the users settings. For Joomla, there is not very much you can do for users, and installing community builder is probably the best option. In Drupal, you can manage users on a much more in depth basis.
As, I mentioned before I don’t want to be too quick to judge Drupal, but I really don’t like it. It seems almost like learning a new language. When I first started with Joomla, it was very intuitive and I seemed to get the hang of it right away. Im sure if I spent more time on Drupal I might figure it out better, but the bottom line for me is, it is not intuitive.
Tuesday Jan. 12th
Today in class we discussed an extension for Joomla called community builder. It is an add-on which adds much more user functionality and control for your site. At first I was pretty sure the user login stuff that came with Joomla would be enough for my needs, but after seeing all the things community builder can do, I think it is something I should have on my site. I plan on doing my semester project on my band, Poney, and I think that having different users on the site would be a great idea. We have some die hard fans and maybe giving them privileges such as access to special content or posting media such as pictures and live fan recordings would work well.
On a different note, as I said yesterday GoDaddy is horrible. After posting yesterday, I experienced even more problems. Once I was off of the “pending” list, I received an email stating that it would now take 24-48 hours before I could “start building my website”. I figured I would at least be able to access it right then, and I actually could. But then, all of the sudden it would stop working, the site wouldn’t load, and it would tell me “this link appears to be broken”. For the past 24 hours, my site has been on and offline, and I have no control over it. Anyone else having this problem?
Getting Started
Hey everyone, sorry its been awhile since I’ve posted, but I’m back! Today in class we covered “things that can go wrong” and installation of Joomla. One of the first things we covered was password recovery and keeping track of passwords. Initially, I didn’t think that keeping track of usernames and corresponding passwords would be much of an issue for me, but as I started to setup my accounts, I realized the importance of writing things down. Between hosting username, domain registry username, admin username/ password, there is a lot to remember. I figure that for security reasons, it would be wise not to use the same username / password for all of my accounts.
After going through troubleshooting topics, we started talking about installation of Joomla. One of the slides briefly covered the different hosting options and the control panels you need to access to install Joomla. Prof. Krause expressed that there isn’t one best choice, they all have their own quirks. After a little thought, I decided to go against the advice of some of my classmates and go with “GoDaddy.com” , which I soon learned was a bad idea. In my opinion, this site sucks. The navigation is terrible, the setting up of accounts is terrible and you are constantly bombarded with advertisements and “special offers”.
I figured bundling domain and hosting would be easiest and the best choice, but for some reason it kept defaulting my hosting to Linux. I could not find a way around this so I just decided to buy them separately and link them together later. After all this, I went to my “dashboard” to try to setup Joomla. I soon realized I had to “activate” my hosting, which could take up to 24 hours. So now here I sit, waiting for my hosting to go off the pending list…..
CMS Evaluation
Today in class we rated different CMS and compared them to Joomla, Drupal, and WordPress with different criteria. I found it interesting that we were rating different CMS / comparing them because we so far have had little to no experience with them. However, after going through the assignment I found it beneficial because we were able to learn new terminology as well as find our way around different CMS. I feel that now that I’ve been through one of the “crappier” CMS, Joomla or Drupal will make more sense / be more user friendly. Also, after reviewing this, I can see why we started with WordPress as an intro to CMS. It is a very simple drag and drop system and nearly impossible to screw up. In comparison, the CMS that I reviewed today, Typo3, is basically the opposite. It is a very bare bones program that I doubt anyone who is not web / development savvy would understand. I am now very much looking forward to getting some hands on experience with Joomla or Drupal.
WDMD 346
This seems like it will be a very interesting class, and I am particularly excited because it will teach us useful knowledge that we will need in the multimedia workforce. Some people in the class seem to have prior knowledge of these types of programs, so at first I was little scared that I was in over my head. However, the fact that there is no coding involved makes me feel a little better. Personally, I’m not a huge fan of blogging, but I think it will be a good tool in this class as an intro to content management. Also, it will help build more of a sense of community within the class.
