Undutchable

Today, I was twittering with someone about this website, he wants to know how to make a page like that, and here goes the conversation in line:
Note: @vanes is me, and the @D is only an initial, I don’t mention his real twitter’s ID.

[D asked] How do I make a web page with ONLY photographs on them, similar to this: http://bit.ly/miP8m
[I responded] @D u really asking how or u only wanted to show that site?
[D replied] @vanes I really want to know how, i don’t know who’s site that is.
[I replied] @D there is CMS that makes u easier to make/maintain ur photos, or is it how you have to make the CSS and HTML codes?
[D replied] @vanes I want to know how to make a page like I showed you earlier. I guess it has to do with CSS and HTML
[I answered] @D yes it has something to do with CSS, HTML and i see 2 javascripts attached there which are prototype.js and scriptaculous.js

It was really a simple question: how to make a page like that? But I had a lots of things on my mind which made the question a bit complicated for me because of the CMS. I assumed he already knew CSS and HTML and had a paid host for his weblog. But no, he doesn’t know how to make such codes and his weblog is hosted by blogger, which I had used few years ago and never logged in again since I had my first paid domain name and host. Today I signed up on blogger again to take a look at the codes; It confused me a lots because blogger has changed big time! Blogger, IMHO, has made editing the template more complicated, or it is just me who’s not up to date, who still thought about blogger as how it looked like 6 years ago (the tags, etc).

See the difference? Maybe, Moveable-Type (MT) has the same tags, I don’t use MT and I don’t understand about CGI. I also don’t know why blogger has made two templates: modern and classic, both have completely different tags, if you say that blogger.com is the easiest free CMS for a beginner, I think you’d better take a look at what it has inside! I don’t like blogger for having those tags and for changing the language to Dutch, just because of my IP address! Just like google, it redirects me to google.nl and they think that all of the people who live in Netherlands feel comfortable whenever google changes the language to Dutch without being asked!

When I already had my first paid host and domain name, I made a few of free templates for blogger’s users, one of them was for photolog as nobody had ever made it at that time, I made the template which was based on pixelpost‘s default template. I have ever published the template on blogskins, but I forgot my username and password as I haven’t visited that site for ages! So in short, I lost the photolog’s template for blogger!

Although Textpattern is also my favourite CMS, I chose WordPress as I find it more organised, especially the latest version which is 2.8.

These are two of the reasons why WP is damn good! It makes me easier to find a theme (picture 1) and to add a new php function (picture 2).

Anyway, I ended up asking him whether or not he has ever been thinking of purchasing a domain name and host

[I asked] @D a weird question: have u actually ever been thinking of purchasing a domain name and host?
[D answered] @vanes well, thought about that, but it’s a waste of money since nobody ever visits my blogspot

Hmm..waste of money? Let me think, so long I’ve been blogging I’ve got lots of advantages of weblogging itself, and having a CMS installed on my own host:
- I learnt more about HTML, CSS, and a bit PHP (still can’t code this myself)
- I’m not depended on a free weblog’s site
- I am the boss of my site!
- Although this is still my personal site, I let people know that blogging has been my serious subject
- There’s [almost] always an issue when you’re blogging on a free weblog’s site
From these things above I don’t think that I wasted my money for nothing as I learnt a lots from having a weblog and a purchased domain name and host. If I had never purchased one, I could have expected myself struggling to take web-design course; Last year I’ve doubted between studying print and web design, but I decided to study print design instead, because for the same price I preferred to learn something that’s completely new for me: now I can make my own offline magazine, book, restaurant menu, advertising brochure/folder, card name, etc!