To start with the website is currently running wordpress. Which is an extremely good blogging platform and relatively easy to customise its looks and feel. I say relatively because you need to be able to get your head around some php code. If you have designed a template for a CMS system before it might not be too hard. I was lucky enough to have already created a template or two for Joomla, which is probably somewhat more difficult to do than wordpress.

The wordpress documentation for creating a layout is quite good, but in all honesty I actually found it alot simpler to follow the wordpress designer’s tutorial. If you are somewhat more technically inclined it may appear a bit basic at the beginning, this for me is no big deal because it gets to the core of the task pretty quickly. Its always nice when someone explains something in layman’s terms.

I deviated slightly from the tutorial myself and went with XHTML strict instead of transitional. Since wordpress is extremely standards friendly you can pretty much avoid all tables being used for layouts. Let me just say that many people think tables are not XHTML friendly, but in fact this is not the case. Tables can be used for tabular data on a website (such as race results at the local track), they should not be used for layout and design if you use the XHTML strict markup.

I am also considering releasing the template for gavindoolan.com to the public, obviously slightly varied with a different logo, but if you are interested in the design or would like to have a copy of the theme, please leave a comment and I’ll try and get back to you. If there is enough demand I’ll release a similar version for public use.

Finally feel free to run the website through the w3c validation service, it should validate perfectly to XHTML strict. Also the CSS validates perfectly too .

There must be a better way I thought and there was, but back then I knew alot less about content on the web. So I decided to get out of my static HTML comfort zone which drove the non-forum pages of my site. I started to explore content management systems. I came across many opinions and many websites containing discussions based on what was best.

That was then, and this is now. I’ve certainly learnt alot about what makes a good cms and what doesn’t cut the mustard, so to speak! The purpose of this article is to give you the reader a heads up on what to look for and hopefully make the right decision for your requirements. Because that’s exactly what’s important here, is that you pick the right system that suits your needs. Of course you can’t always plan correctly for the future and your needs may change as your site grows.

Unfortunately that can mean trying to extract data from one content management system’s database schema into another, not an easy process for someone unfamiliar with sql. It can also cost you a bit if you need to hire a database developer / expert. The message here is try to pick the best system now as it will cost you later if you don’t!