Im looking for a web designing solution

[Bohak]

I know my way around Photoshop Dreamweaver, Illustrator and all the graphics programs as well as internet marketing and seo. But I always get stumped when trying to add a calendar or form to my sites. Is there any type of software or company that I can use as a base to build my sites from and use their tools and add ons to enhance the site? Something that is very customizable.

[MrGamm]

When you say customizable... Would a customization include changing the colors... or changing the calendar so it includes the publishing dates of various pages in your CMS with project deadline and milestone overlays?

What exactly are you looking for? Once you know that there is any number of options of ready made products out there for you to use or buy...

Your best bet is to find something open source... and take a few classes on programming... or... find exactly what it is you want after you know you know what you want.

[Bohak]

I know how to design sites, but i dont know how to add forms and calendars. Wordpress is a good example of what I am talking about, but Im looking for sommething less bloggy. There must something out there similiar to what I am looking for.

[Bohak]

Something like wordpress, but less bloggy, more customizable, with more add ons.

[MrGamm]

Something like wordpress, but less bloggy, more customizable, with more add ons.

I wasted about three or four months of my life wrestling with a really poorly coded calendar solution. I simply did not have the ability to recognize good and well structured code vs a cumbersome mess.

There are hundreds upon thousands of different calendar options out there. Looking for something which is Less Bloggy might not be the best way to choose open source software. You have to remember that many of these open source vendors are pushing their products in vain with little disregard as to how the end user actually has to implement it. ( or live with it )

In the end... I have found nothing could have replaced learning to make a calendar from scratch using the PHP manual itself.

It really is not that hard and will be worth every single second you spend learning how to make one yourself. Jmo... At the very least you will be able to recognize nearly immediately when a calendar application has been poorly constructed... IE... did they choose to use arcane date formats over very simple an elegant unix timestamps, did they properly abstract the template, from the logic layer, from the style layer... Did they choose to encapsulate the entire progrm in a very portable and easy to manipulate codebase or did they basically makea CMS out of a calendar...


PHP: date - Manual (http://ca.php.net/date)


I have been more productive with the built in PHP date functions than I have with any sort of miracle calendar solution. If I had to do it over again... I would have never used someone elses calendar implementation. I would have done it myself as it has taken me much much longer to make someone else's code work than it has taken me to actually code them "from scratch". Maybe I just lucked out and always got stuck with crappy ones?



all of this aside... have you considered that most of your clients will be using web based calendars provided by established web service companies? Why not start with one which boasts seamless connection to those styles of services and work from there?