please...can I do site like this with Serendipity?

[sophie]

Hello, all. First, I´m new to Serendipity and this forum, and glad to be here, as it looks like it´s good&nice and I can learn much from it, so, I´d like to say nice to meet you. Please be gentle as I´m a newbie and english is not my mother tongue.

I maintain 2 websites, which look kind of rusty, now, and after a little research, I decided to build shiny new ones using a blog system. I´ve already tried out WordPress a bit, and it makes my sites look and feel really great, but having stumbled over Serendipity I think I might to use that rather...

So I would appreciate, if s.o. could tell me, if I can do my concept with s9y, so I would know beforehand, if it´s worth putting time into it.

What I want :
- a homepage-side, which is the latest-post-site, i.e. not static side,
but hasn´t something like "read comments / comments off" and the like on it,
- a site navigation, which lists 8 or 9 pages including the homepage-side,
- a page where I can choose between some links to different galleries and then either pages with galleries made with s9y (plug-ins?) or with Glenlay gallery or something (What would you recommend?)
- some regular pages without possibility to comment, one or two pages with comments
- meta-links, especially admin-log-in just on one specified page

I don´t mind, if it will take me some time to work it out, if I know, I´ll get what I want in the end...

oh, yes, and there could be a problem at the time I would exchange the old page for the new? I just have to make the blog´s starting page the new html-index page or is it complicated? because one site is business and needs to be accessible immediately, of course... I wouldn´t mind trying it out with the private site, but I don´t have an own URL for that....

now, thanks for reading (and answering) if you´ve stuck with me so far, sorry for long post kind regards, sophie

[yellowled]

Please be gentle as I´m a newbie and english is not my mother tongue.

Not being a native speaker myself, I'd say your English isn't half bad I'm assuming your mother tongue is not German, right? Because we have a German subforum ...

- a homepage-side, which is the latest-post-site, i.e. not static side, but hasn´t something like "read comments / comments off" and the like on it

Yes, you can do that. You can switch off comments and trackbacks, but that would be global, meaning you wouldn't use comments and/or trackbacks at all. It's also possible to just "hide" certain pieces of information in certain places through the template, but that's just a tad more sophisticted. Also, I'm not sure if you actually don't want to use comments/trackbacks at all or just not display them on the start page ..?

- a site navigation, which lists 8 or 9 pages including the homepage-side

Most of the newer s9y templates include a navigation like that which in most of the cases is configurable in the admin backend. Also, it should be possible to add this to almost any older template.

- a page where I can choose between some links to different galleries and then either pages with galleries made with s9y (plug-ins?) or with Glenlay gallery or something (What would you recommend?)

I have no recommendation for a gallery software, but we have some plugins which sort of "include" various galleries into a s9y environment, so you'll probably want to choose one of those.

- some regular pages without possibility to comment, one or two pages with comments

s9y knows blog entries with comments and static pages (through a plugin) without comments. But you can also disable/enable comments for each blog entry seperately, so there are a lot of options.

- meta-links, especially admin-log-in just on one specified page

You could simply put those on a static page. Or in an html nugget in the sidebar which will only be displayed on a specific page.

I wouldn´t mind trying it out with the private site, but I don´t have an own URL for that....

There are ways to do kind of a "local test installation" on your computer. You could do that to "practice you s9y skills"

YL

[sophie]

This was so fast! Thank you very much for your answer&time, yellowLED (fortunately I was just reading your nick written like this somewhere while browsing forum topics, I didn´t get it in lower case ).
Yes, I meant to leave out comment possibility only for certain pages, not globally. And if I can put my login into a "nugget" just on one certain page, that will do fine
If there are gallery functions, which work nicely, I´d rather use those, in fact.
Well, overall that sounds encouriging, and after having read around for a while, faq and all, I think I will try it, so probably we´ll meet again in the forum, when I encounter difficulties while "practicing my s9y skills"

btw...I read what the faq says about the "s9y" abbreviation, but I still don´t understand... If s.o. could enlighten me I´d be really grateful.

[yellowled]

This was so fast! Thank you very much for your answer&time, yellowLED

You're welcome.

btw...I read what the faq says about the "s9y" abbreviation, but I still don´t understand... If s.o. could enlighten me I´d be really grateful.

Easy. The actual name of the software is serendipity. Computer freaks tend to shorten rather long names by taking the first ("s") and last ("y") letter of that word, then counting the number of letters in that word between first and last letter ("erendipit", that's 9 letters) and putting that inbetween.

So it's s-9(letters inbetween)-y. It's no voodoo, just much shorter. You'll notice once you'll have typed "Serendipity" two or three times that "s9y" is much easier to type

YL

[sophie]

I see ! That´s really good, I can´t believe that I didn´t know that perhaps I knew, but forgot it anyway, my memory, alas, isn´t the best...
Many thanks, again! *off to install s9y*