So for Christmas my mom decided to give my dad a website to show off (and hopefully sell) his art. Guess who got to do all the work? HAHA. I did! Yay! Anyway it was fun and pretty easy to do since I used the same CSS template that I used on my personal site. Basically I just had to come up with the visual design that I thought'd be nice, make the images, write everything, spend HOURS trying to do an overlaid image for the background instead of the plain color that I've got now (couldn't figure out how to do it without compromising the CSS that was in place and my dad said he liked it how it was better anyway), then take all the pictures of his sculptures and ceramics, then edit all that in photo shop, then deal with the free host for a month trying to get the site up, ok... so it took some effort. Now I get to write some custom PHP so my mom can manage the site... or is it time for me to figure out Joomla? haha. Anyway it was fun since I like doing this stuff.
I know by now you are dying for this: http://JeffHullArt.com So go check it out. Maybe you'll like something and want to purchase eh? lol And tell your friends. My dad's a great artist but has no publicity and we're trying to correct that. The photos are kinda sketchy, but that's mainly due to me setting up a photo booth in my parents living room to try and at least make it slightly professional looking. Also as far as the design goes, take a close look at the top links. Remind you of a youtube tutorial mrbiotech? haha. But ya, go check it out. http://JeffHullArt.com there's the link again in case you missed it the first time

Next job: Paypal enabled shopping cart!  I want me some of that pottery, although I have a feeling it might be beyond my meager student budget by the hi-quality look of it.

My compliments on the site!  Characteristically Chris: subtle and delightful

Ya, we're working on getting the whole PayPal thing set up. I have to look into how easy it is to set up. Can't be too hard right? And I'll talk to my dad about the pottery, I could probably work something out for you ;] I'm glad you like it and I'm sure he'll be excited too.

Wow that is so cool your dad has many talents that car was awesome now this wow fantastic.
Website is great, colors are great I would only put it on some engine. Ever since I discovered WordPress I just keep talking about it but you don't have to use WordPress maybe Drupal or something else since they have nice shop templates and such stuff. Anyhow really good stuff.  

Ya i'm looking into that since my mom will be the one to maintain the site so I need to get it to the point where she can do that easily haha.

All hail to you Chris.

I wish I could do something like this for my father...

Might I be pedantic? "This is some of my ceramics", on the ceramics page should be "these are some of my ceramics".


You lucky bastard, you have the time to get to know your Old Man. Don't do what I did and lose it Chris...

Sadly my memories are that he was a drunk and a violent bully who died before I was able to reconcile with him... There is a hole in my heart where a Corkman should be! No amount of phylosophysing ( ) will ever fill it!

Some idea of what others go through ~ http://www.dayswithmyfather.com/#/thumbnails

Ya, I saw that a little bit ago and forgot to change it. Things like that happen when you copy paste a lot


I'm sorry to hear that. I'm not always as nice as I'd like to be, but I get along with my dad really well and we share a lot of the same interests. It sucks being at college and not being able to go home a lot and be with my family, but I do have lots of good memories and there are still more for me to look forward to. Don't worry, I'm not gonna throw away what I've got

And thanks for the link. That's a really sad story, but touching too.

I can relate to that.  My dad was an abusive ex-drunk.  Still hard to deal with sometimes.  Just gotta keep focusing on what I've got already.  Great family and friends are the perfect tonic!

BTW: Days With My Father is truly a heart-warming site

Sadly I ended up in the "you can choose your friends" school, but I have spent a lot of time encouraging friends to reconcile with their parents... truth is one gets a big wake up call when they are gone, despite whatever might have passed between you when they were there. Things left unsaid ( be they positive or otherwise ) remain just that, and no-one benefits from such a situation.

PS. Chris why not put a guestbook on the site?

Hadn't really thought of it. You don't really see many around anymore. I'll have to talk to my dad about it.

There is much wisdom in this.  Just needed that gentle nudge to confront the issues of the past.  Thanks!

Well kinda back on original track, I need info on Joomla.
I've been looking more into it and I do have a few questions about it.
I can make my own template right? (aka find some sweet free CSS then make graphics ans such) I'm playing around with the demo they have and I know I can edit CSS and HTML of existing templates, but that would be a HUGE overhaul of what they have for it to fit what I'm going for.
Aslo, is it a big install on the server? Right now (because of the cheap free host route) I'm limited to 300mb.
Last, it says everywhere that it's easy to get set up. But there's a LOT of stuff going on in the back end. Is it really easier to figure out than it looks?
These questions are probably mostly for mrbiotech but I don't know if anyone else around here has had Joomla experience.

Also, Krstatzar if you drop by again let me know some of the same info about wordpress.

Or any other suggestions are welcome. Really when it comes down to it I really want to keep the site more or less the way it is. Simple, straight forward, and professional. It seems like a lot of the templates out there are big on putting a HUGE ammount of stuff on one page, where as I want to limit it down... ugh. My head is hurting.

Thanks guys.

A simple (but up-front costly) method might just be to use DreamWeaver and enable "Templates."  I ended up doing this for client Wasatch Community Gardens since DreamWeaver was what they preferred.  Once a template is created and the proper variable tags included (for custom header, content, etc...) any update to the template is instantly propagated to all files based on that template.

If you want your dad to be able to update everything on his own, I'd just go with a stock hosted solution, like WordPress, Blogger, or Tumblr.  Free, lots of space, and they all let you do custom templates.

Re: Joomla

Joomla's a small install size (couple of megabytes) and is completely themable.  Templates are HTML/CSS inserted into a PHP file.  Design can be done using just the HTML/CSS and then quickly modified to include the PHP tags.  You'll need to make sure that free server has PHP and MySQL installed and running, though, as well as insuring you have read/write/administer access to at least one MySQL database.  It's install is one of the more graphical ones, but they're all pretty much the same: setting up the MySQL database connection and making the administrator account.