Meta-Question: Web Site Content Management

[cahwyguy]

As you may or may not know, I do the California Highways website. I've just done some quick work to secure the site in terms of HTTPS, and I'm exploring doing some more, ummm, remodeling, to make the pages more responsive.

I've written up my thoughts and thinking on a blog post on the Blog side of the site, at https://cahighways.org/wordpress/?p=13927 . Though who do highway websites and might have thoughts on content management systems (CMS), I'd appreciate any comments or suggestions you might have.

Daniel

[seicer]

I use Wordpress and make use of ThemeForest for responsive templates. Since your site is extensive, I would install a second copy of Wordpress - which can be easily  done either through your host or via FTP. And as far as templates go, choose one that offers more than a blog - which will probably cost $40-$60 for a good template. I can assist in choosing one with features if you link them out.

As far as plugins go, I would use:

• Jetpack by WordPress.com - which offers different types of gallery views for photos
• Media Library Assistant - which offers a great way to manage photos via tags and categories
• TinyMCE Advanced - makes editing content easier
• VaultPress - for backups, which is free for personal sites
• Yoast SEO for content analysis and SEO friendly titles and descriptions

[cahwyguy]

I hadn't thought about a second copy of wordpress -- I'm not sure how well the Softalicious installer at Westhost would handle that (and the last thing I want to do is clobber my blog). If you read the post, I'm not that concerned about the theme other than it be responsive. I'd want support for a menu (to replace my menu along the top), but given that I want to preserve existing URLs, even that might not work well. An alternative is no content management system at all, but just designing a main site template that I could just plug stuff into. I'm just not that much of a Javascript or PHP programmer to do that (Perl, yes, as I'm Perl's Paternal Godparent, but not JS or PHP).

[oscar]

As far as plugins go, I would use:

• Jetpack by WordPress.com - which offers different types of gallery views for photos
• Media Library Assistant - which offers a great way to manage photos via tags and categories
• TinyMCE Advanced - makes editing content easier
• VaultPress - for backups, which is free for personal sites
• Yoast SEO for content analysis and SEO friendly titles and descriptions

How good is Yoast SEO for optimizing a non-advertising-supported site like cahighways.org?

As manager of some far-less-sophisticated sites which also aren't advertising-supported, I'm leery of all the junk e-mails I get telling me I need to use their SEO services. Above a certain threshold, I pay for bandwidth used, with no offsetting ad revenue. So I want to make sure I reach my target audience, without accidentally drawing in others who don't care about the subject matter. I use keywords (about the lowest level possible for SEO), but occasionally remove ones like "travel" drawing people who misunderstand what my sites are about. 

[cahwyguy]

I tend to get rated quite high, without SEO, by having high quality content that gets referenced from other sites, and having (what I think) is a high-quality blog that has loads of references, but no advertising and no sponsored posts. It's one of the reasons I just did the work today to get HTTPS redirection working.

[seicer]

Yoast SEO is one of the top rated SEO tools for Wordpress sites. At a minimum, it allows you to control the titles and descriptions. It offers extensive tools and resources to further fine comb your site over. It's ideal for non-advertising supported sites (I use it on all my sites, now a mixture of ad-supported and non-ad-supported).

Re: Responsiveness: There are a ton of templates on ThemeForest that can be had for $10-$20 (or for free if you query it) - most of them responsive. WordPress also offers a lot through their own catalogue.

Re: Links. You can probably use PrettyLinks and upgrade to pro so you can bulk import links from a CSV (guide). You can also use something like Redirection to manually set 301 redirects from the old URL to the new URL.

[seicer]

Also something I used that could help you tremendously since your site is huge: WP Stage Coach. It allowed me to use one Wordpress install and develop a new Wordpress site for Abandoned on a hidden instance.

[webny99]

Cool site, that's a great resource (although I know very little about this topic specifically)! Forum users vdeane and upstatenyroads both have sites at least somewhat similar to yours for the NY area.

Also, must mention that that post was the 600,000th post to the forum 

[cahwyguy]

Although redirects are a possibility, .... they really aren't, because I don't want to change the basic way I'm generating my site. I just want to make it more responsive. That means I still plan to use my perl scripts to generate content based on my source pages on my home machine, and then upload them via sftp (vs. doing online content editing). Hence, my question. No plans for SEO. No plans for anything that complicated.

The notion of a second wordpress installation, however, is intriguing, and I've put out some queries to see if that is possible.

Again, here's the description of the issue: https://cahighways.org/wordpress/?p=13927

[seicer]

It just seems to be a very convoluted way of inputting content - having read your description several times. It's much more work than what really should be involve, but if you are really pressing for this manner, I would suggest WP Stage Coach to create a second parallel instance and using a ThemeForest or WordPress responsive template on that. I found WP Stage Coach very easy to use and very easy to flip a site over. I would still invest in VaultPress beforehand to back up your entire site just in case.

[TheArkansasRoadgeek]

I use Wordpress and make use of ThemeForest for responsive templates. Since your site is extensive, I would install a second copy of Wordpress - which can be easily  done either through your host or via FTP. And as far as templates go, choose one that offers more than a blog - which will probably cost $40-$60 for a good template. I can assist in choosing one with features if you link them out.

As far as plugins go, I would use:

• Jetpack by WordPress.com - which offers different types of gallery views for photos
• Media Library Assistant - which offers a great way to manage photos via tags and categories
• TinyMCE Advanced - makes editing content easier
• VaultPress - for backups, which is free for personal sites
• Yoast SEO for content analysise and SEO friendly titles and descriptions

Or he could go as far as building a theme to better fit his needs.


iPhone

[cahwyguy]

It just seems to be a very convoluted way of inputting content - having read your description several times.

It's actually not. I use an HTML editor (previously HoTMetaL Pro, now Amaya) to edit my individual files for each road as I process the updates, and when appropriate, edit the other files. I use very few images -- I'm more of a text than a photo blog. My pages look like the below. When I'm done, I run the perl scripts, and upload the output. These scripts not only format the output, but convert any reference to a state route (Route xxx), US route (US xxx), interstate (I-xxx), business route (BR xxx), county route (CR xxx), or Legislative Route Number (LRN xxx) into a link into the appropriate file without my doing any additional work. No CMS will do that for me. I just want the generated output in a new format -- something I'll insert into a CMS edited template. For reference, here's how the tools processed the below into the page I upload (it's the last highway on this page): https://www.cahighways.org/209-216.html

%ROUTE SR 216

%ROUTING
From Visalia to Route 198 near Lemon Cove via Woodlake.

%HIST1964
This routing is unchanged from its 1963 definition.

%HIST1934
This was LRN 133 between Visalia and Woodlake. It was LRN 131 between Woodlake and Lemon Cove. Both routes were defined in 1933. It was not signed before 1963.

Route 216 and LRN 133 originally extended west into Visalia on Houston Avenue. LRN 133 would have utilized Northeast 3rd Avenue to reach LRN 132 at Court Street which eventually became Route 63. It seems this alignment stayed the same into the 1990s or early 2000s on Route 216 before it was shifted onto Lover's Lane. LRN 133 seems to have used a bridge over the Saint John's River near modern Cutler Park on Mills Drive. Route 216 was created out LRN 133 and part of LRN 131 in 1964 but neither appeared to be signed until 1969.

%STATUS
A routing along Lovers Lane between Houston Road and Route 198 in Visalia was adopted on July 9, 1993.
Route 216 Widening in Visalia

In September 2010, the CTC approved for future consideration of funding a project in Tulare County that will widen Route 216 (Houston Ave) to four lanes from Lovers Lane (216 TUL 1.967) to McAullif Street (216 TUL 2.462) in the city of Visalia. The project is programmed in the 2010 State Transportation Improvement Program. Construction is estimated to begin in Fiscal Year 2011-12. Total estimated project cost is $11,200,000 for capital and support. The scope as described for the preferred alternative is consistent with the project scope programmed by the Commission in the 2010 State Transportation Improvement Program. The project will require both commercial and residential relocations. In addition the project would remove on-street parking spaces used for businesses in the area.

In October 2012, the CTC approved $4,820,000 in funding for the Route 216 Widening in Visalia, from Lovers Lane to east of McAullif Street. Widen to four lanes.

In December 2017, the CTC authorized relinquishment of right of way in the city of Woodlake adjacent to Route 216 (Naranjo Boulevard) between Magnolia Street and Palm Street (06-Tul-216-PM 13.9/14.0), consisting of superseded highway right of way. The City, by letter dated November 22, 2016, agreed to waive the 90-day notice requirement and accept title upon relinquishment by the State.

Caltrans is exploring creating a roundabout on this route at the intersection of Route 216/Route 245 (216 TUL 14.015) in Woodlake. Other potential/planned roundabout locations in the San Joaquin Valley include Route 145/Jensen near Kerman, Route 168/Auberry Road in Prather, Route 43/Route 137 in Corcoran, Route 190/Road 152 east of Tipton, Route 190/Road 284 east of Porterville, and Route 155/Browning Road in Delano. A 2007 study of 55 roundabouts in the U.S. found a 35% reduction in accidents and a 90% reduction in fatal accidents when intersections with stop signs or signals were converted to roundabouts. It costs about the same to build a roundabout as to put up traffic signals, and they need significantly less maintenance than traffic signal intersections -- about 60% to 90% less, depending on how much landscaping work is required.

In May 2015, the CTC approved for future consideration of funding a project in Tulare County that will widen the bridges and replace the railings at Sand Creek Bridge on Route 201 near Cutler, the Friant-Kern Canal Bridge on Route 201 near Seville, and the Kaweah River Bridge on Route 216 near Lemon Grove (216 TUL 18.68). The project is programmed in the 2014 State Highway Operation and Protection Program. The estimated cost is $15,298,000 for capital and support. Construction is estimated to begin in Fiscal Year 2016-17. The scope, as described for the preferred alternative, is consistent with the project scope programmed by the Commission in the 2014 State Highway Operation and Protection Program.

%LINKS
California @ AARoads: California 216
Sure, Why Not Blog: California_State_Route_216

%STATS
Overall statistics for Route 216:
Total Length (1995): 19 miles
Average Daily Traffic (1992): 1,850 to 8,900
Milage Classification: Rural: 14; Sm. Urban: 2; Urbanized: 3.
Previous Federal Aid Milage: FAP: 19 mi.
Functional Classification: Prin. Arterial: 3 mi; Minor Arterial: 16 mi.
Counties Traversed: Tulare.

%LRN
In 1959, Chapter 1853 added LRN 216 as the route "[LRN 20] north of Susanville to [LRN 28] near Adin" .
This route runs from the junction of Route 139 and Horse Lake Road to Route 299 near Adin. This is Route 139.

[seicer]

Interesting. I guess I've been too far gone from the programming side of IT for a while now. I started out in PHP and CF programming before moving into ASP - and then into marketing/communications. Now I work purely on business productivity applications and public speaking, so the idea of coding or doing back-end management is so foreign to me!

[cahwyguy]

I"m on the cybersecurity side -- been doing computer security since 1985 or so. In doing that first project, Larry Wall and I were officemates and commuted to work together, so naturally, I was the first user of perl. We're still friends, and very good friends Larry's In-Law's family. This is why my scripts are in perl, but I have much less familiarity with PHP and Javascript. At work, I'm now at the policy and criteria level, both defining and assessing against those policies.

[Scott5114]

I don't think it would be that hard to make a custom Wordpress theme with PHP functions to parse the links for you. I wrote the theme for my business website from scratch and it sounds like you have a lot better idea of what you'd be doing than me. I'd suggest firing up a Wordpress install on something like an Apache instance on your desktop just to play around with and see how feasible it is.

I'm not entirely sure why you'd need a 2nd Wordpress install on your production server–Wordpress can run both a blog and static pages on the same site.

Blows my mind that you were there for the beginnings of Perl–it's probably the language I know best (just clicks with me on some level that other languages don't). It's sad that it's kind of been overshadowed by PHP and Python so there aren't as many neat tools for it as there are the other two.

[seicer]

No kidding, what a small world!

It looks like you can take a good base template that's responsive, found on any of the mentioned sites or elsewhere, and take it apart. There are thankfully tools to do just that within WordPress or you can do it via FTP. I've had to customize quite a few but to build one from scratch? A lot of work and a pain in the ass, but that's just me