The WonderCMS Home Page, squeezed a little to show
menu bar effect you get on a smaller screen.
Background
Originally, this site was hand coded, as were all those listed on the Contact page. If you've read this site's Home page you'll know that it was created to provide identity verification for my Mastodon account. "Toots" on most Mastodon servers, including the one where my account is held, are limited to 500 characters. With that limit I began to wonder if, sometimes, I might want more space to say something. So the idea having a site to which I could add short articles when I'm away from my desktop computer appealed. I would then be able to post links to the articles on Mastodon. Hence I started a search that led to WonderCMS.
Why Choose WonderCMS?
Most content management systems are designed for large organisations, and allow different areas of the site to be managed by a number of editors, sometimes with each editor managing the input of a group of contributors. In contrast, WonderCMS is designed for an individual to use. You don't even need a user name to login and make updates, just a password. Just what I wanted, as it meant the software had no unnecessary bloat for my purpose.
As with many software packages, with WonderCMS, a user can select one of a number of "themes" (often referred to as skins in other packages) that allows the user to change the appearance of their web site. With only knowledge of HTML and CSS and the documentation on the page Create theme in 8 easy steps I was able to create the theme I have used on this site. Unlike some other packages I tried, I did not need knowledge of further packages such as "Smarty" or "Bootstrap" in order to understand an existing theme or create a new one.
The GregCustom Theme
I called my theme "GregCustom" and shared it with the WonderCMS community. On Nov 16, 2024 the theme was added to those officially supported. Anyone installing the WonderCMS package will now find it listed on the Themes page of the Admin Modal, which appears after you login.
It should be noted that the theme was designed for use by those who are not intimidated by the HTML tags, seen when using the default editor. Many of the features built into the theme rely on adding various attributes to those tags and these are often over-ridden when using the buttons on the Summernote tool bar.
Before working with the theme it is strongly recommended that the "resources" folder, found within the GregCustom theme directory, is downloaded and its contents studied. It includes notes on alternative colour schemes, sample header images, and how to use various features built into the theme's code, including that for displaying images, videos and audio clips.
Further Reading
If you're brand new to web design you may need to know about the importance of the separation of Content and Style when building your site. If it's just WonderCMS you're new to, take a look at my thoughts on the Default Editor, Alternative Editors and External Editors.