How was this site built?

Corsica Nazione

This is a long shot and perhaps a silly question but, can anyone tell how this site was built;

www.fastway.ie

Is it using a CMS, was it likely to be built in dreamweaver, or what?

Thanks

tricky D

Joomla

Corsica Nazione

Thank you for that. I'm guessing the template was custom built, how would one go about that?

Trojan

http://docs.joomla.org/Creating_a_basic_Joomla!_template

red_ice

There is also ASP.net in there...

Joomla... *shakes fist* its so bad..

StupidLikeAFox

red_ice wrote: »

Joomla... *shakes fist* its so bad..

Ive seen this mentioned a bit, what exactly is the problem with Joomla? Ive built a couple of sites for family using it and it seems to work ok

CiaranC

red_ice wrote: »

There is also ASP.net in there...

Joomla... *shakes fist* its so bad..

Whats wrong with joomla?

CptSternn

Joomla is a pre-written website. It has two fatal flaws...

First, you are using someone elses template. It's not original, it's just a mass produced copy with no personal flair. Even if you add your own skin/theme it still operates the same and looks pretty much the same. You will never get any awards for the design and people who are big into the web will spot your site as what it is right off.

Thats just from an aesthetics standpoint what is wrong with it. Then there is the bigger issue of security.

See, when you use these cookie cutter template websites you are using someone elses code. That is a big problem for many reasons. First, the more popular it is and the more it is found on the web the more hackers will try and find holes in the security because if they can compromise one site, they can take down thousands of sites in a matter of minutes. Find one weakness, then just do a web search for 'joomla' as the software will have tags at the bottom of pages making it easy to find in Google and they can script a piece of code to hack a thousand sites in minutes.

This means two things for you -

1. You will have to constantly be updating your site with the latest builds, else be subjected to hackers.

2. You will end up having to know about the code on the site, as many times updates are not put out fast enough so you need to be part of various forums and mailing lists that track bugs for the app and be able to manually update it on the fly yourself, else your site will be hacked.

If your site is not popular and way down in the Google ranks you might be able to scrape by for a while and not get hacked, but it will only be a matter if time before some hacker does a thorough search and finds it and defaces your site.

There are websites which hackers post the sites they hack. They post their hacks like some people post other achievements.

http://www.zone-h.org/archive

They also share techniques and post exploits than can be used on template sites. If you use joomla or any other template based pre-written site and don't stay on top of the updates, sooner or later you will find yourself listed on zone-h.

StupidLikeAFox

Thats not so bad then

CptSternn

ColHol wrote: »

Thats not so bad then

Well, as long as you have a local backup and don't mind having to wipe the site and copy the backup to the server every time it's hacked.

If it's not updated that often then no worries, you won't lose any content.

Of course you better hope it's not an IT business website you are doing as people going to view the site will lose all faith in your business when they see a homepage proclaiming your website has been h4X0rd!

Same goes for any repeat business you might get if you put that website in your portfolio and someone goes to check out your work. Then again, most businesses can spot template based sites and are not willing to pay to have someone just skin a pre-coded website so it's not something any quality designer would have in their portfolio anyway.

CiaranC

Have you a source for this claim that joomla based sites are more vunerable and more often hacked than others?

How much would it cost to have a design firm build a site from scratch with every single CMS feature and module joomla has available? And provide the level of support that the joomla community does to its product? And constantly update, modify, change and expand the feature set?

StupidLikeAFox

CptSternn wrote: »

Well, as long as you have a local backup and don't mind having to wipe the site and copy the backup to the server every time it's hacked.

If it's not updated that often then no worries, you won't lose any content.

Of course you better hope it's not an IT business website you are doing as people going to view the site will lose all faith in your business when they see a homepage proclaiming your website has been h4X0rd!

Same goes for any repeat business you might get if you put that website in your portfolio and someone goes to check out your work. Then again, most businesses can spot template based sites and are not willing to pay to have someone just skin a pre-coded website so it's not something any quality designer would have in their portfolio anyway.

Im not convinced. Joomla, Wordpress, Drupal etc have a massive community of developers and millions of "testers" using their products. Its been shown that OSS solutions can hold their own against proprietary software when it comes to security and features - especially well established projects like Joomla etc.

As regards the design, you are right in that using a stock design can look amateurish, but if you can design a skin from scratch or customise an existing design what difference does it make? Most people visiting the site wont know the difference between a custom made site and a CMS site

Also Im fairly sure that decent reputable designers do use open source CMS's (albeit with a custom skin)