Like others I’ve been looking at alternatives to FW, though FW7 will generally do me for a spell, the little I do.
I’m intrigued by Blocs that I’ve played with before and some others, Mobirise is limited though fine for really simple sites.
What I’m interested in finding out is if any of these bootstrap core apps can accommodate a blog and how. Following a request that doesn’t require full cms, just a blog.
Yes there is wordpress and the likes of squarespace but would be interested if any of the alternatives mentioned currently in FWtalk can integrate cms/blog.
I notice Blocsapp has integrated a ‘blog’ but via tumblr so I’m assuming the answer is might be no.
s
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I purchased Blocs last week and I have yet to complete a first website, however I am impressed by the general direction and the speed of change. Documentation is a bit thin at the moment, however some videos are due to be released this month. There is also a brand new a forum that is attracting more users than before http://forum.blocsapp.com
At the moment Blocs cannot match the flexibility of Rapidweaver with Stacks and Foundation etc, however it’s considerably cheaper and much faster in action. The ability to export a design straight to a CMS like this is very interesting.
Ashley
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Thanks Ashley. I’ll check the forum and forthcoming vids out.
There is a blog work around with Mobirise but its just so limited elsewhere but it is mostly free so can’t really complain on that.
The other main area that I deal with (working with artists) is having a good lightbox image gallery and many of the bootstrap based apps just don’t do a good cms integration on this. Pulse can be integrated with Blocs I think but its latest incarnation is not very user friendly.
One day there will be something.
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I haven’t had a chance to try Pulse CMS yet. They offer a bunch of free stacks plugins for Rapidweaver, but for various reasons I’ve neither needed nor wanted to go that route with Rapidweaver. The Pulse CMS solution with Blocs seems more elegant.
Looking on the About page of the Pulse site I noticed the name Tim Plumb and wondered if this is the same Tim Plumb who is well known among Freeway users. Static Site CMS | Pulse
My background is in photography and I have an old site that was hand coded by a friend with a very polished slideshow gallery, however it is not mobile friendly. I would love to update that site, but I’m frustrated by the lack of stylish galleries for both Bootstrap and Foundation because they all seem pretty ugly to me.
Ashley
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I was a big advocate of Pulse but it has changed a lot recently, getting more complex and there are now many alternatives.
I used its ‘classic’ version on my own site www.scottish-photography.co.uk as it gave me the look I wanted, plus its responsive. The ‘lightbox’ gallery especially is what I had been looking for, quick overview then nice larger images of your choice of size with captions. I also used it on another site for an arts group www.pvaf.org.uk that is easy for designated committee members to change. Both are simple sites but that is good I think for image based sites. Letting the work do the talking. The images especially can be easily changed, sequenced and captioned so ideal. Used on some other artists sites I’ve made. I used Slideshow for a while but that has died and wasn’t as good. Still used on a couple of my sites, if still live.
The Pulse blogs work fine though I found a more recent version gave me issues with the rss.
I’m currently using Pulse ‘classic’ on a holiday let site at the moment, integrated into backdraft, as the client wished to have a blog and a gallery, less so for changing the main text.
Yes, the same Tim. Clever chap. Tim incidentally was designer of a really excellent image cataloging (for the time) program called iView that was subsequently bought by Microsoft who then after a year or so killed it off. A friend still uses it and its html web option.
It all feels one is on a long walk and you keep seeing younger people overtaking at speed, only option is to find some shortcuts I guess:)
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Pulse tends to be my CMS of choice at the moment (certainly for small to medium sized sites) as it is quick to work with, uncluttered, and can be easily extended with plug-ins or other code to do what you need.
I started creating plug-ins for the CMS a few years ago and recently moved them over to their own domain at; http://www.pulse-style.com
I’m hoping it will become another resource for Pulse users much like my old Freeway Style site (http://www.freewaystyle.com) and offer all sorts of plug-ins, themes and code bits to make your pulse sites that little bit better.
If you’ve a second it would be interesting to hear what you are looking for in a gallery module as I’m sure I can either help or suggest a solution. I’ve created a number of gallery plug-ins for Pulse including this filterable gallery for a local picture framer but nothing for a photographer as yet;
Regards,
Tim.
On 7 Dec 2016, at 10:41, Ashley email@hidden wrote:
On 7 Dec 2016, at 12:08, seoras email@hidden wrote:
I was a big advocate of Pulse but it has changed a lot recently, getting more complex and there are now many alternatives.
To be honest I think the biggest thing to change about Pulse 4 has been the marketing. The site looks a lot smarter, there is a user forum, various 3rd party developers adding stuff to the mix but (under the hood) Pulse 4.6 is pretty much the same beast you’ll have seen before.
Yes there have been updates and improvements to the CMS but nothing too drastic. There is a version 5 on the way which will be a new version and promises new features so the code will be rewritten for that but it is still early days on that project. One of things that I think v5 hopes to bring is the ‘drop in’ way of working that you are used to in Pulse classic (pre v4) where you can take a static site and just add the CMS to areas you want to update.
I’d be interested in what you found frustrating about Pulse and what (if anything) you are using now as an alternative.
Yes, the same Tim. Clever chap. Tim incidentally was designer of a really excellent image cataloging (for the time) program called iView that was subsequently bought by Microsoft who then after a year or so killed it off. A friend still uses it and its html web option.
I don’t know about the clever chap bit but being in the right place at the right time has been helpful to me! Yep, we last a full two and a half years at MS before the funding was pulled and I ended up coming back to the UK. I still use Expression Media (renamed from iView MediaPro) myself and only used it this morning to batch convert and rename a folder full of images for a client web site. It is still the quickest way I know how to do it.
All the best,
Tim.
I thought it was likely to be the same Tim Plumb. I know Michael through his Yuzool products for Rapidweaver, having purchased a couple of his stacks, but hadn’t realised he was quite so involved with Pulse CMS.
In terms of web galleries I’ve looked at various plugin options for Rapidweaver, but they were all created by software designers who probably look at galleries as nothing more than a functional means to display images. For a photographer it’s much more important than that.
When you work in a creative field clients see your website as an extension of your personality, so it becomes a means to impress them with something more than just the photography. In a sense it’s no different to presenting a plush business card with a unique design, rather than a stale looking template from Vistaprint. I knew a makeup artists who used to hand out business cards where each one had a unique flourish created by hand with nail polish and the clients loved that.
The galleries I have seen for Rapidweaver, whether Foundation or Bootstrap are invariably clunky and lacking in finesse. I sort of gave up on Rapidweaver for this project and I’m marginally more hopeful about achieving this with Blocs, but suspect it will take considerable work. For my own purposes a CMS is not imperative here, but if it can be done that way all the better.
The images on my old photography site have not been updated in years, but look at the slideshow and the small touches, such as soft transitions and the way that thumbnails are highlighted if you pass over them with a mouse, even while the slideshow is playing. Also the way you can just click back to any image when you like and start the slideshow from the same point. http://www.ashleykaryl.com
I am in the process of transitioning from commercial to fine art photography, so at some point I’ll want to launch a completely new site with different images, but the available options have been bugging me because they all appear so clumsy, so I’d really like to see some good options and it goes without saying it has to be responsive.
Ashley
PS There is some mild nudity on that web page but nothing that would embarrass the average reader of the Sun newspaper.
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Yep, we last a full two and a half years at MS before the funding was pulled and I ended up coming back to the UK. I still use Expression Media (renamed from iView MediaPro) myself and only used it this morning to batch convert and rename a folder full of images for a client web site. It is still the quickest way I know how to do it.