Need some feeback here!

[Karenaug]

I'm confused and really don't know what to do so I'm here asking for your advice. I had this designer build me a site, first the site was to be built in Joomla where he said it will be easy for me to navigate, but he ended up building the site in CS3. Now he wants me to get the software and he's going to show me how to navigate it. My friend is telling me that find someone to change the site to wordpress because it will be easier. The problem is he is the only one could edit the site and sometimes I have to wait days before he make the changes so I really want to do it myself. What do you guys think I should do? Purchase the CS3 and learn to work the site or change it to wordpress where it will be easier. The site is Black Women In Sports. And also give me some feeback on the site I'm open to all criticism. Thanks.

[Sophia]

I often don't recommend Joomla for individuals who have limited experience with CMS' for this very reason. Even though it's a very powerful tool, if there isn't a tutorial or if the designer isn't on the ball with maintenance, this is exactly what happens.

I recommend changing your website over to Wordpress as it is much easier and straightforward to use. It also doesn't hurt to ask your designer if he happen to have a tutorial/guide on how to use the Joomla system where you could follow step by step on how make content edits yourself.

He wants you to purchase Adobe Creative Suites 3 to learn and use to perform site modifications? That's an unnecessary expense in my opinion. Shouldn't the CMS have a built in WYSIWYG editor that helps with content editing? If you do need to create custom graphics to go along with your post, I often recommend Gimp. It's a powerful tool and it's free!

[AlisonMSmith]

I concur with Sophia on this.

I've been using DreamWeaver for years (GoLive before that, hand code before that back in the day) and IMO it's a very good program (not inexpensive!), but it's NOT the kind of learning curve I think you should require of a client. It's DESIGN software. And if you HIRE a designer, they should be providing a reasonable way for you to update without requiring you to become a designer!

Last summer I learned Joomla to redesign our engineering site. Very flexible and powerful, but the learning curve was steep. IMO it's not intuitive at all. Spent many hours working on the site, then set it aside in frustration. About two weeks ago, after spending another week getting back into trying to complete the Joomla site, I decided to scrap the whole thing and put it on WordPress with the Thesis theme.

Within less than two weeks it was done, for all intents and purposes, including setting up catalog with a shopping cart. There is still some tweaking to do, but it was so much easier and met our needs.

Add to that the fact that anyone can easily update the news or other items, add to the catalog, etc. and it really works well as a CMS for this application.

[AlisonMSmith]

Looking at your site, I have a couple of suggestions.

I'm having trouble with the pics. The bar of pics across the top isn't loading fully all the time. The nav bar is bumping down to a second line. The pics at the bottom are all stretchy. Shouldn't it be "Women's Sports"?

The purple is jarring to me. The purple header elements look like the web designer was trying to do the aqua thing, but didn't know how. They end up looking really old-fashioned. (And they are cut off in the right sidebar.)

Mostly, I think, you've got a lot going on. What is the central, focused purpose of your site? What do you want to accomplish? Does EVERY SINGLE ELEMENT accomplish that? (Like blogger widgets and sudoku puzzles?)

[Karenaug]

Thanks for your response and I'm glad to read the responses and will love to have all I can get. And I think it's Allyson who suggested Women's sports well first you will know that no characters like ' could appear in the domain name and womenssports.com is already taken. I've had a difficult time in coming up with a name and would love your suggestion and willing to change. As to the other part of your question I am a little confused, are you guys saying that I should change the site to wordpress?

[tigerconceptsmarketing]

I hope that you didn't pay much for this site. I would recommend that move over to Wordpress it is a lot easier to work with then Joomla. I never got the hang of it, however Drupal is also a little easier to use as well.

However, if you are a novice I would certainly use Word press. Also you need to change the color scheme. I now that women are assoicated with pink and purple that, however with the current color scheme you probably wouldn't keep visitors coming back to see what new information you have.

Hope this helps!

[AlisonMSmith]

Originally Posted by Karenaug

And I think it's Allyson who suggested Women's sports well first you will know that no characters like ' could appear in the domain name and womenssports.com is already taken.

Sorry to be unclear. At the bottom of the page, by the "stretchy" photos, it says, "Women Sports around the World!" I think it should say "Women's Sports around the world."

As to the other part of your question I am a little confused, are you guys saying that I should change the site to wordpress?

IMO that would be a good idea.

[sarahxbox2009]

With our vast experience in web design and programming, we can confidently recommend the use of Adobe Dreamweaver, Adobe Fireworks, Adobe Flash, Adobe Contribute, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Creative Suite. They are so easy to use, beware you can get hooked on to them.

[Sophia]

Yes, the Adobe Suite is an awesome group of software to own if one plans to dive into the print and web media business. But to spend XXXX of dollars for scant use is not practical in this poster's case. She would do just as good with open source software.

[MikeF0421]

Knowing that you wanted to be able to update the site regularly yourself, the designer really should have gone with something simpler to allow you to do that.

I agree with the other feedback you've been given on this already. Especially the point about there being a lot going on. Your blog has a lot of articles already, and the ones I read were great, however, most of your visitors are never going to scroll the whole way to the bottom of the page and they might be missing something that they would really enjoy.

I would maybe organize the articles into some kind of categories and topics with a menu at the top of the page. Maybe have each category as a drop down menu that then lists the article titles under that category.

Just a thought.