Advice wanted - where to start?

[djaef]

Greetings Pixelposters!

I am new to pixelpost. I have been following several photoblogs for years now, and finally have made it as far as getting my own. After a fair bit of looking around, I decided pixelpost was the way to go, in part because I read it had a very good online forum and community. I've sucessfully installed pixelpost to my server, and have uploaded a few pictures to see how it works. It's all working good, and that's about where I'm up to.

But I would like clarification and advice as to where to go and how to develop my blog further. I'm quite happy with the simple template, but I do want to make minor modifications to it. I'm relatively at ease with html, but php is quite new to me. Do I understand it correctly that to edit a pixelpost website, you basically edit the html of the various templates, making sure to leave the pixelpost tags? Are there any complications using a wysiwyg editor or does much of it have to be done in the code? I can see that customisation possibilities are endless, yet I'm a bit wary of how to go about it. Are there good tutorials on customising basic templates? I have read a fair bit already, but I'm overloaded with info and much of seems quite advanced. Where does a newbie start (apart from the obvious faq's and 101's)?

Also, is a blog different to a website in that it's basically created online, as opposed to being created offline and then uploaded? Do I transfer the whole folder back to my pc to make a back-up of the blog? It seems to only reside online. What if the server goes down? Do people regularly download the site for backup?

It all seems very exciting and wonderfully interactive. I'm quite prepared to do the hard work to understand it (I'm more a designer type than a coder, although I can read and edit html). I'm just looking for a good overview and place to get started for what seems like an overwhelming process when you are unfamiliar with it.

Thanks for any advice and tips. I'm using Pixelpost 1.5 by the way.

(and no I haven't given the url, because I want my blog to look all polished and shiny before I show the world :))

Cheers

Geoff

[Vernon.Trent]

Hi,

as always, there are answers in the PP-wiki for all your questions :)

[djaef]

Thanks Vernon. I find the wiki rather overwhelming, and on the other hand missing answers to some of my more basic queries.

I think I'll start by picking your blog apart ;)

[Connie]

try to see the sections of this forum here

there is a section for beginners and there are even some small tutorials
there

Pixelpost 101
instructions, guides, how-to's, and general information...pretty much everything you need to know the in's and out's of pixelpost

a wiki is a collection of knowledge and it is there to documentate the knowledge about wiki

try to install and play around with it, that is the easiest point to start
use PP like it comes in the standard version, change the templates, find out what you like and what you dislike

like in real life: one step after the other..

enjoy it!

[djaef]

Thanks Connie. :D

That is of course very good advice, but as a total newbie it seems just so utterly overwhelming at first, that it's really hard not to beg for shortcuts.

That said, I've hardly left my desk all day and I had quite a breakthrough this evening, editing templates, and re-arranging where everything went on the page.

I've got a long way to go, but for my first day playing with it, I think its coming along nicely...

Have a look if you want - photografica (http://www.photografica.com.au/blog/)

[Connie]

Geoff,

it's good that you came through it!

It's not the difficult when you got used to it
come back with questions when there are new challenges ;=)

I like this old box very much and when I read that you like Carl de Keyzer,
what about William Egglestone?
For me he is the best!

Greetings to downunder,

Connie