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Geek Culture / A website project was dumped on me using wordpress and i never did any kind of web stuff before.

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PAGAN_old
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Posted: 29th Sep 2012 00:44
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So my friend was working on a website for his mom, and they had a bunch of arguments over how it should be done, anyway i wont go into details, it dosent exactly concern me.

Anyway, a few days ago, my friend got sick of working on the catalouges, so he dumped that work on me and his mom agreed to pay me for the work (currentlye for filling up the 600 catologued items orgonising making links and stuff she agreed to pay $160)

I never did any kind of web stuff exept dreamweaver stuff in high school that did not involve ceating and orgonizing a database-like thing.

The website is built in Wordpress, I had a lot of trouble understanding how it works, at first, but ive been at it for a few days now and while i still dont get how it works, i can get around easily enough after a few days.

In my opinion Wordpress is some masochistic creation. I can see how it might work with simple blogs, but websites that have sales catologes (mine is currentley 600 pages of items and they still have about 2000 more they plan to add in small amounts over time, hopefully they wont ask me)

i was wondering if anyone here who is more experienced in web or wordpress in particular might give me some hints on how to make my life easier as adding and orgonising hundreds of objects each done by hand is very grueling and nerveracking work. My friend who did this before me says there is no easier alternative which i find hard to believe. (He is known for being stubborn at his masochistic desire to do everything the hard way and its quite irritating sometimes)

First of all, one of the more pleasant things i found working with in Wordpress is its rather nice system of organising large data structures that is based on sortof a parent/tree structure. but the structure only exists for show only, i still have to make all the links by hand and having this much data, to work with on a constant copy/pasta repeat mode, makes me more prone to mistakes especially in the more complex trees, such as 20 categories, with up to 15 categories inside each of the 20 and about 10-15 more inside of those.
I find it hard to believe that there is no way to make the parent/tree (php database?) structure automatically link all its pages based on the dependense structure it has. My friend keeps telling me that there are no free database managment systems that do this, and all companies with large website catolouges either hire a catalouge manager (like what i am currentley doing) or develop their own system and keep it to themselves.

Another issue i keep having is with tables. Whats with them anyway? they keep getting screwed up and stuff. I have pages with dosens of pictagrams of their products all aligned neatly in tables. each cell in a table has a picture and a name above it. I realize that tables get scewred if the name in the cell is too long, i try to make the titles shorter when i can but its hard first because the website is in russian (which tends to have words slightly longer than english) and second the titles are scientificly/genetically correct names for different types of flowers/plants/foods (the website sells a bunch agricultureal stuff mostly lots of custom genotypes of plant seeds which are long)
Anyway, i have limited space to work with, sometimes, i have to revert to 3 colums of tables instead of usual 4 to get everything to alighn properly, but other times, the table proportions get screwed up in such a way that dosent make sence. like one colum becomes twice as wide as it needs to be for no reason and i cant force it to be any narrower, or the table proportions become offset if i turn the text inside the cell into a link which dosent add any real charecters thus it shouldnt really change the shape of the table. Often, while the tables look neatly stacked in the editor they show up crooked when i save the content and go to that page in the browser. Well as far as tables are concerned it seemes everyone hates them and everyone thinks they make no sence and everyone tells me there is still no easier more advanced way to get a bunch of pictagrams neatly stacked than an outdated 20 yearold HTML technology (i even tried to use CSS options to edit the tables, didnt work) Once again, i find it hard to believe that there isnt an easier more modern table like system that works at least like a MS Exel grid- straight forward, flexible, easy to align things perfectley, no surprises out of it.

Tables aside i have another very frustrating issue i cant understand:

Each cell inside the table has a picture and the name of the product. Usually what i do is select both the text and the picture, and add a link to both making the text and a picture a single link. But latley, these random glitches (i was told they are glitches, but i somehow doubt it they are, must be something i am doing wrong) As always i select both text and picture, add a link to them, but in the end for some reason, only the text becomes the link while picture stays linkless. (yes i always remember to clear everything from any existing links before i add my own and it still happens) Usually, adding the same link to the picture seperatley solves the problem but since i have to do hundreds of these by hand, this doubles my work.

So, basically, i learned everything i know so far about how to work with websites in the last few days from no experiece beforhand. So if anyone here has experience with wordpress. or web design in general and can point me in the right direction in some of these issues or give me a secondhand opinion (because i dont trust my friends opinion)

Also since i made a significant progress on the catalouging part of the website in the last few days which my friend stalled for about a month when he was in charge of it, i fear that his mom might actually officially hire me to work on the website and i really dont like doing this job and because of my brief experience everything about web development turns me off now. I initally agreed to help mostly because it was a polite responce and his mom is very presistant (even me having no experience in the field didnt make her change her mind, i guess there was noone else more capable around) and its hard to say no to her and she threw in a payment as well so i agreed to do a list of 500 items (yet now they added another 100 just as i almost finished up doing the previous) and the fact that i seem to be getting better at it scares me.


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The Nerevar
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Posted: 29th Sep 2012 00:53
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Well I learned HTML through this:http://www.w3schools.com/, But there are a lot of other tutorials in there that might help you out.

Fulfilling the Nerevarine Prophecy, one trial at a time, because I... Am... The Nerevar!
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PAGAN_old
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Posted: 29th Sep 2012 01:30
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I am afraid i dont know any HTML and i believe that coding in HTML the entire thing would be useless and would take an insane amount of time. I use the graphic tools avaliable to me with Wordpress web engine.


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The Nerevar
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Posted: 29th Sep 2012 02:07
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What kind of codes does Wordpress use?

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PAGAN_old
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Posted: 29th Sep 2012 02:33
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Well it uses mostly HTML and can do CSS as well. as far as i know its customisable, there are different plugins, but since it gives you different tools and has a wisiwig interface, i dont think knowing HTML is neceseary. I managed to learn quite a few things about making websites without knowing any HTML (we had to take an HTML course in 10th grade, but i dont remember anything and didnt find HTML knowledge useful so far)

btw i dont know if its the tables fault but wisiwig dosent seem to live up to its name, What i see is usually somwhat screwed up and wrong version of what i eventually get.


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Indicium
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Posted: 29th Sep 2012 02:39
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For the most part: tl;dr. However, HTML knowledge is essential for web development, I don't care what anybody says, how can you develop a website without HTML?

As for tables, don't use them unless what you're making is a table, it's not the 90s any more and we have CSS for laying out elements.

Aside from that, I have no advice regarding wordpress.


They see me coding, they hating. http://indi-indicium.blogspot.co.uk/
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bitJericho
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Posted: 29th Sep 2012 02:40
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Surely there's a sales plugin for wordpress that does catalogs? Ready! Ecommerce Shopping Cart looks quite nice.

Visit my blog http://www.canales.me. Also yes I changed my name. It was time for a change.
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The Nerevar
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Posted: 29th Sep 2012 02:42
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That W3schools website has everything about CSS and HTML, I highly recommend it as I mentioned it before.

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Neuro Fuzzy
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Posted: 29th Sep 2012 03:14
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How has no one said PHP yet? HTML/CSS is just for describing how the page works, and if you know XML you pretty much know HTML (though tutorials wouldn't help. I've done a lot of tutorials on html and yet I still end up googling commands all the time). CSS is a bit different and a little harder to get the gist of (with property inheritance and IDs vs classes)

But anyways, Jerico's right, look for a plugin that does it for you! If you absolutely can't find one, and if you're planning on doing wordpress work in the future, it would be worth it to learn php and ask around on the forums to find out which commands you should use to add the items to the database. (I THINK wordpress wraps all the commands, but you may or may not have to write SQL queries)

So... that's harder and probably just as time consuming as entering 600 articles yourself if you don't know any html/css/php/sql... but at the same time it will set you up better for future work, and it's less mind-numbingly dull than manually adding 600 things to wordpress!

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PAGAN_old
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Posted: 29th Sep 2012 04:45
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Quote: "Surely there's a sales plugin for wordpress that does catalogs? Ready! Ecommerce Shopping Cart looks quite nice."

its not entirley an online store, just the catalouge, stuff from there is bought over the phone (the client is skeptic of having an actual online store but she had offers of actual online stores to sell her stuff for which they want to have her database to avoid copying all the content by hand as i am doind now but if there is a way to extract the PHP database out of wordpress with all the pics and info already on it, that would be a big help for her, but dosent really concern my work.

Quote: "For the most part: tl;dr. However, HTML knowledge is essential for web development, I don't care what anybody says, how can you develop a website without HTML?

As for tables, don't use them unless what you're making is a table, it's not the 90s any more and we have CSS for laying out elements.

Aside from that, I have no advice regarding wordpress."

I am not really developing the website, i am just filling it up with info and doing small tochups. As for CSS, ill give it a try, its unfamiliar territory for me I just chose tables because they are vaugley familiar to me and fast to set up untill i start running into retarted problems with them.

Because of the vast amount of copy/paste work i have to do, i am trying to figure out the fastest ways to go trough the process but its still very grueling work and the faster i go the more mistakes i make
Quote: "So... that's harder and probably just as time consuming as entering 600 articles yourself if you don't know any html/css/php/sql... but at the same time it will set you up better for future work, and it's less mind-numbingly dull than manually adding 600 things to wordpress!
"
i hope i dont get to do any future work on this, just wanna get this job done well enough and get paid
i realized i actually hate working with web.


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Dar13
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Posted: 29th Sep 2012 06:42
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Quote: "What kind of codes does Wordpress use?"

Wordpress is based on PHP, but you can use HTML and such with it.

Quote: "I am not really developing the website, i am just filling it up with info and doing small tochups. As for CSS, ill give it a try, its unfamiliar territory for me I just chose tables because they are vaugley familiar to me and fast to set up untill i start running into retarted problems with them.

Because of the vast amount of copy/paste work i have to do, i am trying to figure out the fastest ways to go trough the process but its still very grueling work and the faster i go the more mistakes i make"

Are you copying this catalogue from physical paper or from a digital source? If it's digital, it's very possible that you can automate it by using a scripting language like Python.

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PAGAN_old
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Posted: 29th Sep 2012 08:55 Edited at: 29th Sep 2012 08:57
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Quote: "Are you copying this catalogue from physical paper or from a digital source? If it's digital, it's very possible that you can automate it by using a scripting language like Python."

a digital sourse, First 500 were copied from the older website before they bought a new more professional sounding domain name which called for a more professional-looking website to which i was tasked with moving the info to. The rest of the catalouges are new and come as a set of pictures and PDFs and text files. The new 100 pages of info i actually have to assemble into a page myself instead of copying mostly complete work.

so to be short- Info is from a digital sourse (a few different sets of them)

I knew i could script in automation, but since i dont know how, i thought, there would be built in tools (for the likes of myself) within Wordpress to help with large amount of data. Altho, some people told me that Wordpress is made for creating simple blogs and isnt built to handle large databases.

Speaking of which: these wierd (bugs?) ive been having with making links (sometimes i have to redo them 10 times before the links will properly get attached to things i want them to be attached to) Another weird thing i noticed. At first i thought i was just making a lot of mistakes in my haste and repetetive tasks, but today i confirmed that the wisiwig editors, sometimes dont apply the saved changes of the page layout that you make, or apply just half of them. Once again, had to fix the unsaved changes and save again about 10 times over before the page layout os properly saved.
Also these issues seem to be randomly coming up. I can work for several hours not running into anything like incorrectley saved link or partially unsaved page layout, later these issues just randomly start to come up here and there and stall my progress.

My theory is if what some of my freinds in the US say is true, these are infact errors caused by the bloated size of the website and wordpress just cant handle the data and starts glitching. others say glitches like that are normal in Wordpress because it sucks and its open sourse and has tons of plugins conflicting with each other yet its the only decent free PHP engine. I always had the feeling that good or popular open sourse software is very stable and shouldnt have this amount of glitches in it otherwise noone would use it and it will have little support and remain full of bugs. But since a lot of people use wordpress, i was guessing it had good support.

Are my speculations wrong? if so correct me. If i am more/less correct about these issues, i am still confused as to why would popular open sourse software be so buggy?

To get the idea of where my opinion about buggy open sourse comes from (i feel like i need to explain this because i believe i sound rather stupid making such bias assumptions about open sourse)- i played with FreeBSD for a while and it was flawless aside from my own mistakes and lack of proper compatibility with some hardware i have not noticed any actual bugs, also, i had pleasant experience with some other common open sourse software

Meanwhile, since i dont know any scripting, i am already a bit late on the deadline so for now, i just need to fill the website with content and get them all at least partially linked up, They dont care how sloppy it looks or about half broken links as long as the content is there as fast as possible, after that i can take my sweet time polishing it and making everything work nice and look pretty.

I guess for now there isnt an easier way to speed up the process that wont take up too much time. I guess i had high hopes for modern web editing software. Graphics in games get better every year, so why shouldnt web editing become more advanced and easier to manage large amounts of content? i havent seen anything too impressive in Wordpress since playing with dreamweaver in 10th grade aside from wordpress being an online thing and apperentley a lot more secure than non php stuff.


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MrValentine
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Posted: 29th Sep 2012 08:55
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Would likely be better to use <div> </div>'s along with CSS

If you could tell me the shape and dimensions I could put together some code...

Mind you Wordpress uses an RDMS type database... Which would make things much faster for you actually...

And that would also mean you have a portable database at any given time...

Anyway let me know if I can help in any way with the HTML+CSS but I use HTML5+CSS3 primarily now...

Hope that helps...

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PAGAN_old
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Posted: 29th Sep 2012 09:12
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Quote: "Would likely be better to use <div> </div>'s along with CSS

If you could tell me the shape and dimensions I could put together some code..."


most which i have trouble with is when i have a bunch of 135x250 pics stacked in rows of 4 down the page with a title above each. the picture properties show abunch of empety text fielfs for editing such as CSS class, styles, and a few others.

The problem is some titles are longer than others causing some cells to get larger to fit in the longer title screing up any related cells making it look uneven. If divs can help, they need to somehow stay equal in proportion and keep the pictures neatly aligned and possibly the text names as well to the best of its ability
Quote: "Mind you Wordpress uses an RDMS type database... Which would make things much faster for you actually...

And that would also mean you have a portable database at any given time..."

this is something i am curios about and the client seemed like she needed something like a portable database.


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MrValentine
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Posted: 29th Sep 2012 10:52
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I will have a play around putting a database together, should give me something to focus on for today while I am at my shop [I will only be able to reply here tonight like UK time 2AM Sunday morning >.< going to be a long day for me]

Actually tell you some truth-be-told, I am also setting up the website for my shop, which sells bags, backpacks and accessories etc... kind of a fling business on the side of my current businesses... and your predicament has got me thinking... [As I am not so keen to use WordPress but now I may have an idea to make me rethink that...]

Seeing as this would benefit the two of us, I can look into the usage of such a structure...

The thing is, you would have to come to terms with understanding some basic SQL and HTML... and the other issue is, would you want to embed this into the WordPress system? if so... then I suppose I could make it flexible to be displayed on per page basis...[just means a lot er a little lol editing] you would be able to use the existing WordPress database so this should be beautiful ^^

One other thing is you would need to work your way around the database for that WordPress installation...

I could make an interface later making the process easier but for now it would be easier to just manually input data and much safer until I grasp the process a little better to automate it...[html/php pages to basically list some entry fields say 10 at a time and you specify the tables they should be uploaded to inside the database... there is of course complication with data/image storage]

On top of it... I would need to see an example of this grid alignment you speak of... I suppose you would need to increase the image sizes to compensate for that text growth... if you cannot shrink the wording, blow-up the images say 30% larger... I can do this in a batch process for you...

On that note... I would say you need to:
> Find out how and whether or not you have direct access to the MySQL [phpMyAdmin] panel for the WordPress installation
> Show us or email me an image [screenshot] of that image grid...
> Decide whether they would want to continue using WordPress [and I agree with you that it is horrid... most of the time] or if they want to have a system built from scratch... it looks as though they are not actually utilising the functions of Wordpress aside from theme and pages... are they using the blog? [I say so as it was mentioned before that there are E-Commerce plugins including WooCommerce available for free-ish which should simplyfy the proces but this grid thing looks like a more specific thing...]

Should anybody else have more experience [AL ^^] in this area I welcome someone to take precedence

I must add my help here will be unlikely to come into place in time for your deadline... but again I could at least help resolve the table/grid issue somewhat for now...

Hope that helps!

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PAGAN_old
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Posted: 29th Sep 2012 13:17 Edited at: 29th Sep 2012 13:49
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Quote: "Actually tell you some truth-be-told, I am also setting up the website for my shop, which sells bags, backpacks and accessories etc... kind of a fling business on the side of my current businesses... and your predicament has got me thinking... [As I am not so keen to use WordPress but now I may have an idea to make me rethink that...]
"

So curios, what were you going to use to build your website before you started thinking about wordpress? (and what did i say that made you rethink it anyway?)

Quote: "One other thing is you would need to work your way around the database for that WordPress installation..."
not sure what you mean by that i am using the online editor if thats anything.

I dont have acess to PHP my admin since the previous guy didnt give it to me since i am inexperienced, i can only edit the website layouts and maybe some other stuff, still not sure what i can do with whatever admin privelages i have.

The deadline i mentioned is just when i should get all the data on the website somehow. I will spend plenty of time after tomorrow to clean up all the accumulated crap caused by errors tables and my own mistakes so i will have time to consider adding something new.


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bitJericho
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Posted: 29th Sep 2012 19:16 Edited at: 29th Sep 2012 19:17
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Wordpress runs on MySQL. MySQL is useful for databases of pretty much any size. By that same token, Wordpress can handle a database of any size.

Most decent e-commerce software will allow you to export a database, so check around.

Microsoft access/excel can input data from any source and then you can modify and output it, again, in many different kinds of ways. I'd say if you don't wanna program your own converter, use access or excel. (Or libreoffice's equivelents if you'd rather)

Visit my blog http://www.canales.me. Also yes I changed my name. It was time for a change.
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Indicium
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Posted: 29th Sep 2012 20:11
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You shouldn't have taken this job on, though.


They see me coding, they hating. http://indi-indicium.blogspot.co.uk/
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MrValentine
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Posted: 29th Sep 2012 21:47
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Just got home now... I need to see how that grid looks...

did you try to resize the images?

Jerico> or XML...

Indicium> lol

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PAGAN_old
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Posted: 29th Sep 2012 23:04 Edited at: 29th Sep 2012 23:54
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Quote: "Microsoft access/excel can input data from any source and then you can modify and output it, again, in many different kinds of ways. I'd say if you don't wanna program your own converter, use access or excel. (Or libreoffice's equivelents if you'd rather)"
I remembered how i flunked Access in my officetech class, i think i can try to remember Exel well enough tho if that can be used to store the PHP database. I might be getting ahead of myself but something tells me that i will be pressured to stay in the process of the development even after i will be done with my part of the job so i might as well learn a bit of what i need to help with the site.

Quote: "You shouldn't have taken this job on, though."
I know, but i was pressured into taking the job, First the original developer begged me to do the catalouges since he didnt have the patience for this amount of work and after did a significant amount of this i understand him clearly. Then the client is a very presistent lady and its hard to say no to her without expecting to be pestered about it (also her generous payment offer is was tempting and i need money since i got behind on my bills and the next paycheck i get is half a month away). There was noone else she knew who could do this and the guy who dumped it on me showed me the basics of managing the catalouges but i mostly had to learn myself by doing them and now he thinks i am getting better than him at this since he isnt really a web guy more of a photographer/computer networking guy.


Quote: "Just got home now... I need to see how that grid looks...

did you try to resize the images?
"


ill get some screens in a few minutes meanwhile here are some links

http://aseeds.ru/?page_id=3811
This page: the pics are in tables, (Hope you dont mind Russian) since the names are short, there was no problem with this one. Also, i dont think resizing the images would really be good. graphically it seemes to be the perfect size and seriosly i have 600 of these, have pity sir

This on the other hand:
http://aseeds.ru/?page_id=3952

is a disaster area. The names of the strands (and substrands) of these cabbiges is long and shouldnt be shortened as its important for the viewer to know exactly what strand or hybrid/sub-strand of cabbage it is before seeing the full description. If you check out more pages, you might find more disaster areas such as this. i tried taiming the one above as much as i could but it refused to listen.

-btw cant help but share that some of these have hilarios names like there is one cabbage strang here thats called "Megaton" other semi-hybrid/artaficially engineered strands that have numbers in their names such as "Cubana sweet corn 210" or "Detroit 538" and "Oregon 31" making them sound like radioactive isotopes or secret military installations/experimental weapons lol. there is even a tomato strand named after spacecraft- "Soiuz-8 F1" (dont remember what it was famous for either a failed manned mission to the moon or a piece of an old spacestation they had back then)

So, i dont think resizing the icons would do for me, I would rather split the long names of the strands into 2/3 rows and make each cell/columb the same size (unlike now some are streched bigger than others and cant be scaled back down again, and whenever i try to split the long names into a few shorter rows, it refuses to save these settings, randmly for some reason.
Also i was told that bugs i was dealing with like partial and incomplete saves seem to be a general problem with wisywig stuff. But ill upload a few screenshots from the inside the editor in a few mins.

[EDIT]
Ok guys check out this insanity (i can see how it makes sence considering the way tables seem to work) but still

also i apologise in advance for large screenshots if it bothers anyone.

Meanwhile inside the WordPress WYSIWYG editor:...

-What you see:

(high res link)
http://wime.ru/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/what-you-see.png

(Leave the mess as it is, save and view the page normally)

-Is what you get:


......
(hi res)--http://wime.ru/wp-content/uploads/2012/09/is-what-you-get.png



nearly perfectley stacked with the exepton of a minor offset in the third columb which can be easily fixed
(well actually this is HTML tables we are talking about so attempting to repair that minor cosmetic offset, we might end up ruining it even more lol)

i seriosly did not edit anything in the page, i just took a screen, saved the horribly screwed up tables, and viewd the page in a normal mode. How do web people even tolerate stuff like this?

[edit] made my pics smaller.


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bitJericho
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Posted: 29th Sep 2012 23:52
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Quote: "I remembered how i flunked Access in my officetech class, i think i can try to remember Exel well enough tho if that can be used to store the PHP database"


You wouldn't use access or excel to store a database. Just as an alternative to writing a converter from one type of format for your files to another type of format. Once you output the file in a format you like you import that into the end software.

For example, say you have 3 different types of data and you want to merge them all into a single standard. You input the 3 datastores manually using excel to convert it to rows and columns.

Then you can output that into a CSV file and import it straight into wordpress. Or take that excel file and make it output some HTML that you can paste into wordpress.

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PAGAN_old
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Posted: 30th Sep 2012 00:09 Edited at: 30th Sep 2012 00:12
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Quote: "You wouldn't use access or excel to store a database. Just as an alternative to writing a converter from one type of format for your files to another type of format. Once you output the file in a format you like you import that into the end software.

For example, say you have 3 different types of data and you want to merge them all into a single standard. You input the 3 datastores manually using excel to convert it to rows and columns.

Then you can output that into a CSV file and import it straight into wordpress. Or take that excel file and make it output some HTML that you can paste into wordpress."


ok i think understand now. Pretty much Exel tables can be integrated into wordpress and displayed on webpages? This might be a good way to replace my tables with something better.
does it retain the ability to create links on the data inside the integrated exel table? or if the links are already there, does the process of integration keep the links on that data? (like my list of pictures?)
[edit] i must be sounding like an annoying hopless noob.


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ionstream
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Posted: 30th Sep 2012 03:49
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It's not a PHP database, its a MySQL database. PHP is the programming language that WordPress and its templates are written in.

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PAGAN_old
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Posted: 30th Sep 2012 05:36
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Quote: "It's not a PHP database, its a MySQL database. PHP is the programming language that WordPress and its templates are written in.
"
yeah, sorry, PHP and MySQL i confuse the two with each other since i often hear both of these terms in the same subject and honestley i have no clear idea on what they are each responsible for doing. PHP is a language wordpress is written in. I am guessing MySQL is some sort of web data structure like a database?


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ionstream
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MySQL is a database program. It runs on a computer and stores data, waiting for incoming connections to it. PHP has a plugin that allows it to connect to MySQL servers, which can be on the same machine or on a completely different machine. Once its connected, PHP can request data from MySQL like "give me all the rows in table 'blog_posts'", which might give all of the rows in the table called "blog_posts".

SQL databases contain many tables, and each table is like a file in Microsoft Excel. It has a bunch of columns (also called fields), and rows. Each row is separate entry in the table. So if a table called blog_posts has the following columns (fields):

blog_number,
blog_title,
blog_text

Then the first row in blog_posts might look something like:

blog_number = 1
blog_title = "My First Blog Entry"
blog_text = "Hello, this is an example of a database entry in MySQL!"

The second row in blog_posts might look like:

blog_number = 2
blog_title = "My Second Blog Entry"
blog_text = "This is my second blog post. The first one was so fun that I decided to do it again!"

This information is given from MySQL to PHP, which then makes it available to your web page script so that it can be finally printed out to the user.

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bitJericho
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Posted: 1st Oct 2012 14:27 Edited at: 1st Oct 2012 14:28
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No, you wouldn't use excel at all. You might find some benefit in using it just as a converter to convert data from one type to another. But it would *not* be in the final product.

It might benefit you to learn basics of mysql and learn how to manually modify your wordpress mysql database (or get a plugin to do mysql). You might find the process of importing large sets of data is very simple once you figure out how mysql works.

Really if you have a uniform set of data, it would be trivial to make a php script that reads in *all* the data and creates a series of mysql statements and completes your work.

If you have a uniform set of data you need to import, email me and I'll see if I can do something for you.

Visit my blog http://www.canales.me. Also yes I changed my name. It was time for a change.
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PAGAN_old
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Well so far, i finihed entering the data manually. Because this work made me pretty much the data mport script that was mentioned. i orgonised the work as if it would be done on a conveyer belt. and today i realized that the thhought/action process of orgonized way to easily and quicky go trough a lot of data which is done by a lot of simple repetative tasks. I realized that my brain and myself doing this work are the reasons people write scripts in the first plac lol. Since i am only human, i made tons of mistakes in the catalouges which i am currentley cleanig up now. So i will need to go a long way to make this job easier (i figured by now that untill there is a better way, i will be asked to be the data manager on the website)

Stil i learned a few things so far. This might sound silly but, my most proudest accomplishment is learning how to make HTML tables do what you want. while it still makes no sence as to how they work the way hey do, i discovered several methods you can influence the table structures to make sence. I can finally frce tables display a nice neat grid structure.
one of the concepts behind it, is trying to modify the one screwed up section of a table to look more normal like the rest of the section. then i accedentally discovered that if you cant beat em, join them! by which i mean, to make it come out the way you need, you leave the screwed up part as they are, and start mutilating every inch of the normal grid structures. and untill, everything neat and clean in that table structure that needs to be scred up has been screwd up just as much, only then it will finaly look the way you need it to be. So far my methods have not failed me on making table structures so i guess i am not afraid of HTML tables any more. And i can still use them for my work. since they became a bit easier to use. but still now i have to search the site again, looking for any mistakes i could have made and fix a lot of large screwups i didnt bother to fix since i was in a hurry back then to have the initial work done. Now i can study this stuff in more detail, if i want to make any firther content managing an easier and a more pleasant experience.


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xCept
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Posted: 2nd Oct 2012 02:58
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This project seems to be coming along well, so congratulations on what you've already accomplished. Personally, I would have used a solution designed specifically for catalogs, Wordpress would not have been my choice for this project.

For instance, I tend to use osCommerce for cataloging large stores online. It is a free, open-source PHP application that allows administrators to easily add and update categories and products, upload images, and much more. Although it is meant for ecommerce stores that accept online orders, such features can be disabled as needed. The downside is it can take quite awhile to personalize this application and requires knowledge of PHP to do a lot of customization. There are many other ecommerce CMS packages out there.

I briefly looked over some of the pages you made and there are still a few small details that could easily be improved.

http://aseeds.ru/?page_id=3839

Since you use tables, by vertically aligning the cells to the top and inserting a manual linebreak between the picture and the hyperlink text, you can quickly a make more professional layout as I show in the screenshot below.

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PAGAN_old
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Posted: 3rd Oct 2012 15:17
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Well i fulled her up with most of the content before 20 more pages were added to my work list with added pay. i guess, ill end up staying as a content manager. Right now i am working on the small details, fixing up tables and reformating the text on the description which were copied from PDFs still doing everything by hand manually nothing changed exept for my frustration with tables is gone since i learned how to get them to do what i want.

since all the contentfrom the old site is copied everything else will be provided in PDF files which contain the text and pictures that i have to crop and resize, copy the text, reformat it, make a new page for each item, enter all the data, make a link to it and repeat the process for whatever amopunt of items i will be given.

Learning PHP and stuff is a bit out of my leauge for now. i guess ill continue doing this for now.


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MrValentine
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Posted: 3rd Oct 2012 15:27
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Have you heard of NOTEPAD++?

I use more specific editors but thought NOTEPAD++ might be handy to you

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PAGAN_old
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Posted: 3rd Oct 2012 16:43
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now that you mention it, i do know about it. altho i wont get around to text editing since the guy who is in charge of the design, just crashed the whole thing and the backup was 2 days ago so i have to redo a bunch of work i did during that time which is thankfully not a lot.

Sometimes it pays to be lazy and procrastinate.


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MrValentine
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Posted: 3rd Oct 2012 16:59
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Quote: "Sometimes it pays to be lazy and procrastinate."


WORD.

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That Guy John
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Posted: 9th Oct 2012 21:48
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My word...

STOP what you are doing.
Go to http://wpmu.org/
Wordpress is so simple to use and yes there are plugins to handle
E-commerce.

And for $160, you should not of even considered taking this on. Friend's mom or not, you put yourself in too deep into something you know nothing about, for way too cheap.

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PAGAN_old
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Posted: 10th Oct 2012 21:06
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Quote: "And for $160, you should not of even considered taking this on. Friend's mom or not, you put yourself in too deep into something you know nothing about, for way too cheap."


Well i have done so much work on it than initially planned that the pay was raised to $300 and they will pay me extra for any further catolouges they want me to add. The pay is actually above average for any normal content managment job around here but then again, i have to do it all by hand unlike other companies that have a much quicker and easier database managment thing setup.

As for e-commerce, they dont want it for some reason. its gonna be an over the phone thing and they found some other company who will sell their products online. My job is just filling in, orgonizing and editing the content, making link infrustructure and stuff.
I already did most of the work, whats left is editing the text out of its PDF format and making it look all pretty and nice


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bitJericho
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Posted: 10th Oct 2012 22:06 Edited at: 10th Oct 2012 22:07
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Quote: "As for e-commerce, they dont want it for some reason. its gonna be an over the phone thing and they found some other company who will sell their products online."


The thing is, you can use a free e-commerce package and just turn off/"un-program (much easier than programming!)" anything you don't want, like the checkout or prices.

But it's done so uh, cheers!

Visit my blog http://www.canales.me. Also yes I changed my name. It was time for a change.
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PAGAN_old
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Posted: 10th Oct 2012 22:20
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I asked them about it, they dont want me to do it. The guy in charge says he will do it eventually himself but for now, i should leave it be. Besides, i am almost finished with the main bulk of work, just gotte edit 650 pages worth of text to make it look pretty, and fight with the HTML tables some more. as the default tables i crated for some reason behave differentley than the ones that were moved from the old website. and the ones i created for some reason refuse to display text and picture properly always shoving the text somwhere below the picture instead of displaying it next to the picture. But ill figure out something.

this work makes me feel like i can beat a world record for mass content managment in wordpress!


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Dar13
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Posted: 11th Oct 2012 02:18
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Quote: " fight with the HTML tables some more."

I wish you luck in that battle, sounds like you have some left over styles from the old site. If you use chrome, you can get the entire stack of CSS properties that are applied to a specific element through the development console(you can even turn specific ones off which is a fantastic debugging tool).

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That Guy John
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Posted: 11th Oct 2012 03:32
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Again... wordpress...

Good luck to you though. If you plan on taking up another "job" like this again your best bet is to learn wordpress. You would have been done in 2 days if not the first night. Wordpress is not at all hard to get a grip on. Everything is point, click and drag and drop.

If you want to know how to install wordpress on your desktop in order to learn it, let me know and I can type up a quick tut for you.

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PAGAN_old
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Posted: 11th Oct 2012 21:57
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Quote: "I wish you luck in that battle, sounds like you have some left over styles from the old site. If you use chrome, you can get the entire stack of CSS properties that are applied to a specific element through the development console(you can even turn specific ones off which is a fantastic debugging tool)."

thanks for the tip
Quote: "If you want to know how to install wordpress on your desktop in order to learn it, let me know and I can type up a quick tut for you.
"


i am using the web inteface for now, i got the hang of wordpress basics so far. but i should be finishing this up as soon as i beat the tabe styles and get the text formatted.


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