Soho or Joomla for an artist site?

[Tom vR]

Hello everyone.

I know Vasili promotes Joomla and Karen M is an expert on Soho. I have used Soho a bit and will use it more for my own new site. But I have a friend who is an artist. He wants an easy simple site, but I do not want to use BV for this. I need to give my friend administrator rights so that he can upload / manage his own photos, indicate the prices and indicate easily what has been sold already, etc. Here in South Africa we cannot really use Paypal for customers to pay us. After 3 years in business the local bank will allow credit card payments. Planning for the future, I know Soho has the cart feature, but what about Joomla- must I purchase additional add-ons for a cart?

I realy need some quick advice on the admin rights and cart issues as I'm no expert on any of Soho or Joomla. I have also lost base here since its been a very long time away from this forum as I'm just quite busy with other things right now.

What do you recommend, Soho or Joomla and why?
Much appreciated.

[Vasili]

Re: Soho or Joomla for an artist site?

Trust me, Tom .... no one here is an "expert" but there simply are differences in the levels of expertise, experience, and capabilities using the various technologies available to us all, and the preferences some of us make to address posts in certain 'specialized' areas, that's all. The only real Soho "expert" I know of is Ben at TemplateZapper.com (he's a certified Soho developer), and it is only after I began suggesting him as a referral these years (since I developed my first Soho site in 2006) has his name begun to be used by others .....
You can see from many of the posts that we all keep learning from each other as we go.

I too, have multiple sites each in Soholaunch, osCommerce, and even Magento (which may inidacte something of an evolution, I suppose), and am personally very adept in all of them --- otherwise I would not bother posting.

I waited a long time to jump in and explore all the possibilities of CMS, and in particular Joomla. But, I have gotten very familiar with it and have myself done incredible things for both myself and many others. If you "shop around" amongst many of the high-profile design houses that actually have a storefront (not just some pretend website), you will find that they too are coming around and trying to immerse themselves in CMS as quikly as possible. Probably because it is easier and more versatile than Dreamweaver, and has such an expanse of add-on's that suit just about any need - being Open Source will do that. The eCommerce add-on comes in many differnt kinds of configurations to satisfy all kinds of particular needs.

Add-on's for Joomla (called 'Contributions') are free for the most part, easy to install, and can be customized easliy enough even with a cursory ability using PHP. Guaranteed you will spend a day just browsing the eCommerce collection, that's how many there are, but you will find exactly what you are looking for if you make a good effort.
You can do so very much with all these options in front of you, Tom .... don't be like me and waste time before you discover the next best thing! Install Joomla onto an add-on and fiddle around with it to get the feel you are comfortable with!

[Karen Mac]

Re: Soho or Joomla for an artist site?

Tom..

If you have experience in soho I think you will find it much easier to coach someone into its cart and facilities. Learning cms takes a bit more than just a simple soho site.

Use your gut feeling.. dont limit it to just what Generals say.. either way you go.. were about to assist you.

Karen

[Alien Dude]

Re: Soho or Joomla for an artist site?

Hi Tom
what you really need to take into account is what and how far will your maintenance be no this site for your friend be. Also how much experience you have in ether option you have given. The main reason for this is that you have to take into account that your friend / client will probably know nothing of the program you opt to use. therefore you are ether going to teach them ( very time consuming in ether case, very easy to say it is but in both cases your going to have to spend time explaining, ) or run it yourself.
Both soho and Joomla are not easy to learn at the best of time and even harder to explain to someone.
Both come with addons, plugins or in joomlas case modules, plugins, components, so finding what you want is not a problem though some in ether case will be a paid extension.

Both come with good carts joomla has more to choose from but not all free, but check that the carts do what you want, itemised coupons, payment and delivery options and so on.
I personal used our own cart for this reason and customised it to take the main look of the site. But then I have used four options to build one site incorporating there different design options.

You have limited yourself to these two here but remember there other options or in fact a combination of options to choose from.
But both soho and joomla will give you a simple site with a cart,

The only real difference between the two is that you can install a joomla site plus a test joomla so that you have the site itself plus a test one wear you can test your addons before you add them, this is always a good option in what ever software your place on your server.
Also the option for your friend to edit upload and change the images and text with out even going to the admin panel.

At the end of the day you say this is going to be a simple site for your friend who is a artist so that has got to be taken into consideration.

[Vasili]

Re: Soho or Joomla for an artist site?

Joomla is very easy to learn, since it is based on the "module system" and it allows Users to move things around on pages much easier than in Soholaunch. And, for Tom's description of the project (for an Artist), Joomla will offer far greater customization of the look-and-feel than Soholaunch, which is why I suggested it as a better choice out of the 2 mentioned.

Adding an eCommerce solution to it is an afterthought, as I doubt there will be the large inventory being loaded, or a lot of inventory management (one item lots only), and thus not the laborious task hinted at above. The versatility of CMS and the greater freedoms to create your own layout and "look" is, in my opinion, one of the best reasons to consider CMS over Soho. Most Artist websites are intended to function more of a "Gallery" than to sell artwork.

Otherwise, I would suggest simply going with a slick Flash-based template to add to the total overall look of an Artist site (maybe one with a photo gallery to show all the works?)!
If there is a real need to sell, then link to a shop that is easy enough to manage via the online Admin panels .... not a big deal at all, especially if there is a concern about messing it up or having to "fix" things: it's a lot easier to fix only a module at a time than it would be to re-do a whole site!

[navaldesign]

Re: Soho or Joomla for an artist site?

Thank you for the informative and well written post!.

[Tom vR]

Re: Soho or Joomla for an artist site?

Thank you very much Vasili, Karen, Alien Dude and George.

You guys are some of the best, really. Well spoken words and detailed discriptions. Always pasionate in what you believe in.

See Vasili, what I meant by experts. Was not meaning technical experts, but experts like you with the necessary background to shed some light on my questions. You have actually answered my question about the artis site as well as my would-be next question.

See, I have just started my own business about templates and e-Learning, Instructional Design, and facilitation and later also other software design. For this I now feel more tempted to rather use Joomla as the CMS will do it for me. I assume I can use Joomla to share documents as well? At a later stage I will install Moodle as well for the training part of things.

There is just no time to learn both Joomla AND Soho. The one I choose must be right for my new site AND for my friend's (our reverent) artist website. And yes, he will be hosting an art gallery displaying all his paintings, but must show what has been sold already.

I did find it a bit difficult with Soho to get the look and feel with my one website, that I have not fully developed and advertised yet, but with new company name, I will start fresh.

You say, it's easy to achieve the look and feel with Joomla? As easy as with BV?

Alien Dude I realy like your Joomla site look and feel.

You guys have answered my question and George has rubber stamped it. While I'm learning this program I will rather kick start the artist site with BV if necessary and re-design it later as it will be a small site for now.

Many thanks.

[Tom vR]

Re: Soho or Joomla for an artist site?

Karen. You said I must use my gut feeling. This is my gut feeling to use use Joomla, but I will explore Magento as well. Thanks for the offer to assist.

[Karen Mac]

Re: Soho or Joomla for an artist site?

Tom

No hard feelings in any way. If you decide to revert back to soho just let me know. I also do joomla and for a beginner soho is easier.. updates with the click of the button so you dont have to worry about losing a WHOLE site and is easily backed up. It too can be customized with a little know how, but .. try joomla first.. were here to help either way.

Karen

[Tom vR]

Re: Soho or Joomla for an artist site?

Thanks Karen. I have installed Joomla from Fantastico in the cp and will soon explore its use. No time right now.

[Vasili]

Re: Soho or Joomla for an artist site?

My offer to help "if you get stuck" is also always valid.

[navaldesign]

Re: Soho or Joomla for an artist site?

Vasili and Karen are both here to help if needed. As all the rest of us.