I keep getting asked about the CMS I use for most of my websites at SME-Web. It is based on LightNEasy which I find one of the easiest CMSs to use. Developed by Fernando Baptista it comes in two main flavours, Full and Mini. The full version uses a database, either MySQL or SQLite, both of which are common website hosting facilities. But the Mini version doesn't use a database so it can be used on really low cost hosting. We always use the MySQL version.
Don't expect it to do everything that Joomla or Xoops will do - the clue is in name "Light and Easy". I am a believer in Keep It Simple Stupid (KISS) and Fernando's CMS is right in line with this. It has all the basic functionalities that most people need for website: Content, Contact, Gallery, Links, Downloads and News (which can be used to blog). Plus there are a number of plugins which extend the functionality. And furthermore he allows iframes (he calls it "wrapper") which will allow you to embed other programs like the SuperCali event calendar.
One of the great strengths of LightNEasy is the way it uses templates for the design. It is dead easy to take an existing design and convert it to a template for LightNEasy. There are quite a lot of templates available on the website, but you can quickly adapt any of the free templates or create your own. When you get into detailed template design it is useful to have a tool like Dreamweaver to help with the style sheets. But you don't need to buy one because Kompozer is quite up to the job.
But remember if you want to get on with your work its best to get someone to build the website for you. If you come to us we can build you a LightNEasy website which you can then maintain with ease.
Best Wishes
Adrian
Thursday, 10 February 2011
Cropping PDF Proofs
I am currently working with The Tower Magazine having just taken over their website. We have some great plans but I thought I would share with you two facilities we plan to use. The first is Yudu.com, this is an electronic publishing website which allows us to post electronic copies of the magazine on line and put a link from the website. if you go to www.sbs-tower-magazines.co.uk and click on the magazine cover you will see what I mean. All this needs is a PDF file to upload, which we get from the printer as the proof document. Yudu have a range of offerings for selling stuff as well but the basic facilities are free (with a small bit of advertising).
However..... the proof from the printer comes with all the crop and centre marks on - not quite what we want to show the readers. And this is where another brilliant product comes in A-PDF Page Crop. This super tool reads the pdf from the publisher, loads in a mask (they call it a rule) and then saves a new version with every page cropped to the mask. As a monthly task this is just so easy that I raise my hat to A-PDF. The rule that we used was created by us - having loaded the first copy we clicked on a tool to draw a crop box, easy because the printer had provided crop marks, then a tool to Apply that box to all pages then Crop and Save As... The program then asked if we wanted to save the "rule" for future use . Well -- duh -- Yes! This is all made easy by A-Pdf because the tool bar is labelled 1, 2, 3, 4. 4 easy steps to follow. Next time we open the new pdf, import the rule (that bit could be easier if it remembered previous rules) then crop and save - viola!
A-PDF Page Crop has a load of other ways to define the crop, e.g. automatically crop white space but for the magazine we were working on this was just so easy. Now while Yudu have a free service A-PDF Page Crop only has a free trial version, however the full version comes in at only US$27 - how much time do you have to save to make it worth it?
The rest of the A-PDF site is worth a walk round too, there are some real goodies there, One I like the look of is the Restrictions Remover. How often do you get forms that you can fill in but not save? The UK Government is great at doing that to us, so they make us fill the form in, print it, send it off, then ask us to change something -- on an unsaved form. Maybe no longer - I thought PDF Typewriter was good but this looks like it will tick a few boxes really well.
Happy publishing and remember that if you want an affordable website call in at www.SME-Web.net
Best Wishes
Adrian
However..... the proof from the printer comes with all the crop and centre marks on - not quite what we want to show the readers. And this is where another brilliant product comes in A-PDF Page Crop. This super tool reads the pdf from the publisher, loads in a mask (they call it a rule) and then saves a new version with every page cropped to the mask. As a monthly task this is just so easy that I raise my hat to A-PDF. The rule that we used was created by us - having loaded the first copy we clicked on a tool to draw a crop box, easy because the printer had provided crop marks, then a tool to Apply that box to all pages then Crop and Save As... The program then asked if we wanted to save the "rule" for future use . Well -- duh -- Yes! This is all made easy by A-Pdf because the tool bar is labelled 1, 2, 3, 4. 4 easy steps to follow. Next time we open the new pdf, import the rule (that bit could be easier if it remembered previous rules) then crop and save - viola!
A-PDF Page Crop has a load of other ways to define the crop, e.g. automatically crop white space but for the magazine we were working on this was just so easy. Now while Yudu have a free service A-PDF Page Crop only has a free trial version, however the full version comes in at only US$27 - how much time do you have to save to make it worth it?
The rest of the A-PDF site is worth a walk round too, there are some real goodies there, One I like the look of is the Restrictions Remover. How often do you get forms that you can fill in but not save? The UK Government is great at doing that to us, so they make us fill the form in, print it, send it off, then ask us to change something -- on an unsaved form. Maybe no longer - I thought PDF Typewriter was good but this looks like it will tick a few boxes really well.
Happy publishing and remember that if you want an affordable website call in at www.SME-Web.net
Best Wishes
Adrian
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)