Anybody Remember Updating Their Sites Before Using a CMS?
 

I was going over a few things that need fixing on Twistys today. While I was looking at the members area I was thinking about how good my team has it. They upload a set, enter it into the system and done. When I started Twistys man what a nightmare especially since I'm not a programmer. Here is what I had to do every night.

Prepare 4 Photosets and a full 1 video.
Generate the thumbs and html pages for the Photosets.
Generate the clips and the html page for the video.
Upload all the files.
Then update our main members home page, our updates page, our coming soon page, our model index, and our model page. Each one for each set manually.

Have it all done and upload between 11pm and Midnight every single day.

Ahh the good old days!

LOL now it's upload a zip, fill out a few fields, schedule, hit submit.

Btw your post in my other thread was awesome man. Thanks! :thumbsup

Yep, used to edit my sites in notepad. It's more automated now but I still like to crop thumbnails by hand because it will always beat out a computer in quality.

we need better thumb AI :d

Yes I do.

However, I do not refer to them as good ole days. Investing in CMS/scripts/automation cut my work time easily by 3/4 the time. I could do a lot more in a lot less time.

:thumbsup

I ran a web site company back in the late 90's and remember how I built a very easy, but nonetheless functioning CMS for an Art Gallery I did a page for. It allowed them to easily update the pictures to the current exibition. Very simple, basically add new folder named with exibition nr, make sure the images are named 1.jpg, 2.jpg and so on, then just do a search and replace in two files for the exibistion nr and be done. But the owner never understood how to use it, so he called me every time and paid me to do it for him. Most probably my longest time customer, who bought services from me every month for about ten years. :winkwink:

Ahh, the gooood old days! :thumbsup

We did everything by hand in the beginning, updating everything by hand including the HTML pages, etc.. I've been around since '01 so I've had the worst and the best setups.

But how does one transition from updating in Notepad - as I still do today - to a CMS? And how can it be done without totally re-designing your existing mem area or can it be integrated into existing design?

All important questions for the small wee webmasters out there, like me. :D

ahhhhhhhhhh I still love notepad :) lol.

Life before Word Press... now that's a shocker for some people now a days...

:2 cents::thumbsup:thumbsup:thumbsup:thumbsup

I'm still in the transition. :(

Been hand coding my own stuff since forever. I know of no way to painlessly blend the two together. It's just a lot of work. I'm still questioning whether it's going to be worth it or not. I've fooled around with various cms's over the years, but never really took the plunge. I hope it works out.

Good luck! Good to know I'm not the only dinosaur still roaming the earth...LOL

What I did, in case this helps at all, is go and re-design all my member's areas so they are on the same template. So when I need to update any of the sites it's always looking at the same HTML code in Notepad. I once timed myself updating a site (that had a photo gallery already generated; add 5 minutes to this time if you have to do everything):

45 seconds

That was it! Cut-and-paste one <TR> etc and done! So it feels like my own homemade CMS except it isn't automated and no one else could run it if I kicked the bucket. Other than THAT it's manageable. :)

i updated by hand until i had 9 paysites, then erik joined the team and made my life so much easier.. used to logo each picture by hand too in photoshop, used htmlpad, and some program that would make thumbs for the paysites..

cant say i missed those days

I still do this for a Pornaccess site i have its easy just crop 2 thumbs and write description and cut and paste hitml and upload to server, cant use a cms there anyway so have to do it by hand :) Take like 5 mins max the way i set it up.

remember when dreamweaver templates made things "easier" lol.

thank god i learned php

Yep, same here. If I suddenly croak, my whole system becomes frozen in time, because it's a closed manual setup. I'm not really concerned with anyone else running it after I die, I'm just looking to shave some time off the repetitive chores. Whether or not it's going to work for me has yet to be determined.... lol

I'm still using those fuckers too... lol

hahaaaaaaaa :1orglaugh

they got the job done for a while but whenever you had to modify the template to include or exclude something it defeated the purpose cuz you had to upload & sync everything

those were the days

yep. and a full sync takes fucking hours man. :disgust

Yep.. I loved those days!

Before it was harder for people to publish content, so there was also a lot less competition. :D

Anyway I always hated repetitive work.. remember moving thumbs around manually to have the "latest" scene on top? I always find a way to do thing auto, then too.

Just check out this site I did pornolization.janswebring.com


It's hosted in jans webring STATIC html servers, however the site is dynamic and it takes 1 line of text to add new content :D

Good and bad you can have a wordpress site with a nice template online in less than 5 mins.

yup! i used to hate breaking the habbit of manually updating, used to hate the idea of php and SSI!

My first website was a daily bikini site, which I updated by hand first thing every morning. BY HAND, meaning no script at all.

I rember when i first started... I had to develop my photos in a dark room, then walk 15 miles everyday in the snow to my server company (FTP and cars hadnt been invented then) for them to put them online...

I also used to sleep in a shoebox in the road and eat gravel...

Coming from a manufacturing background with a lot of years in a factory making actual real things anything that automates and makes something easier to do is a bonus. Both from a doing it yourself point of view and also from a how easy it can be to pass it on to someone else to do instead of you.

Used to do it for 4 years. I felt like working. lol

All you guys that have already crossed over are giving me some good vibes in here about my decision. Sounds like nobody misses hand coding, so I probably won't either. (I hope) :thumbsup

i've run in to a couple of people recently (as early as last month) who were/are still doing this until i started working with them. i HATED this lol

you won't miss it at all. i used to save all my files as .html by default. now i save them as .php by default even if there's no real coding yet :thumbsup

Yeah, most all my files are php already, but I save as new ones as .html until they're coded. That's how I know what needs to be worked on and plugged in. But it still sucks.

yes my index file had an updates.inc file which i update my site with by hand from my console on my unix box in vi

was a pain

Great thread Shap. It's fun to see a thread like this that makes you look back and remember how things were. It's crazy to think about how far we've come.

Oh man. The old days LOL. The first gig I had in the industry was working with a site that was HTML and Cold Fusion. It took about 4 hours to do a site update and this was AFTER a video editor had cut and encoded the vids and manually taken screenshots.

For pics we would flip through pages in a binder and pick out and scan chromes (slides). Not fun. Then you had to crop out the black from around the pics and rename them. Then we resized, watermarked and thumbnailed via a series of PhotoShop batches and uploaded the separate folders. The company was so resistant to technology that rather than use scripts I had to hire a full time Webmaster as an assistant to help with all the tasks.

That was 10 years ago. Now we sell a CMS that does it all automatically with 1 click. I've yet to meet anyone who said they wish they waited longer to automate their production methods :)

AJ

I was just taking a look at some of your stuff the other day... I think maybe there was a demo signup or something, but then I got distracted and pulled away. But if there's a demo, I'd love to take a look. :)

nothing can ever duplicate manual tweaking of thumbs. The rest can be semi-automated, but there's just nothing that will look as good.

Yep, there is a demo form but you can also just shoot me an email or ICQ and I'll reply with a login so you can take a look around at your leisure.

AJ

Cool, hey there's an error in your 'Elevated X' link in your sig. Missing a '.' after www

That's what I get for trying to innovate and update my sig once a year :winkwink:

Thanks man. Good catch!

Started as a content producer in 1998-99 was a pain in the ass just to update pics on the damn site ;-)

Yeah, I do.

Now I have it fully caching and 304 aware for google love - and I haven't posted anything publicly for 6 months.

Granted -

Nobody wants to see me naked.

You may have already retreated back into your cave, but are you talking about the legacy post I made? Realized I didn't quote it so didn't know if you'd know it was for you. :thumbsup