Geeklog Forums

Dear friends,

A couple of days ago, I volunteered to help to redesign the website of a non-profit in my area. I'm a webmaster and I thought I knew everything about webdesign because I knew HTML and CSS. I had no idea about the existence of "server side scripts" like php and programs like Geeklog.

As you can imagine, I was in for a rude awakening when I discovered that this nonprofit had its website done with php and had geeklog installed. I connected to the database and looked through the php files using an FTP client ...and I didn't know what to make of the php code that was in those files...or how to modify portions of this page using php.

What I want to do is change a couple of things, add an image or two on the main page, and maybe after that, add a flash animation. I understand that it's not possible to make those changes from the administrator panel of Geeklog...or is it?

And if it isn't, can someone tell me if it's absolutely necessary to master php to make the changes I want. Is there a user-friendly WYSIWYG program out there, such as Frontpage, that encodes php?

I'm basically doing this website for free and I cannot spend too much money on training and books. That's why I hope someone will direct me to the right resources. Thank you in advance for all your help!!

Start here: Customising Geeklog

bye, Dirk

Thanks, dirk. But actually the first thing I want to do is to change the content of the front page, not the layout.

Someone told me I could make the changes I wanted from the thtml files under public_html/layout/ . I checked them out but the part of the page I want to change is not in any of them. It's part of the central block...give it a look: http://streetvendor.netfirms.com/ (It's that table with that funny image in it.)

I think it's being rendered from the database but how can I tell where it is rendered from?

Thanks!

Usually, you will have stories on the front page (like we do on this site). You can also create a "splash screen" with the static pages plugin.

bye, Dirk

Great! The page has a "static pages" plugin already installed and I just found out how to access its control console. Thanks for all the help!