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Designing a website for my Prof's lab. Questions about: WordPress, Frames! Clueless!

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macrumors 68030
Original poster
Jun 26, 2005
2,643
10
Toronto
Alright, so my prof wants a lab website (finally). She wants it to be easy to update, however, so I suggested something like Wordpress. The other thing she wants, however, is that it be hosted on her individual University of Toronto webspace.

The problem here is that I don't believe the University gives us access to a control panel or mySQL options, etc. Right now I'm just uploading an install of WordPress to see if it even works.

If it DOES work, then how do WordPress installs end up functioning? I created a test site on the WordPress site itself, but of course that's hosted there. If I install WordPress on a web server, then I don't have the ease of use and flexibility of having a WordPress account, am I right? As in, there's no dashboard that you can just use to edit the site from within a browser. Or can you have your WordPress install mirror a WordPress account, so you just update the site through WordPress.com?

Barring all of that, is there a way I can just make the U of T website a huge frame that just links to http://xxxxxx.wordpress.com? Is that illegal in any way? And can I make it look as though it is in fact the page itself, and not just a frame?

Pardon my stupid questions. I've never used WordPress before and any websites I've designed before I've done on my OWN and just used Dreamweaver MX to make a WYSIWYG site with bad coding and lots of tables/images. I don't know anything about PHP, mySQL, CSS, etc. But I'm the only in the lab who even begins to understand how any of this works.

Help me out! Thanks!
 
Installing WordPress on your own server gives you all of the functionality that the WordPress web site accounts gives you plus more.

You may need to customize the install a little so there's no naming conflict in the database with other people who may install WordPress. You'll want to make sure the web space actually has PHP and MySQL support though. Not all do.

The frame idea won't work very well, but is doable. Not illegal, unless it violates some school rule for web space usage.
 
you can do the frame.. you'll just have to make it adjustable to the browser window size, say if someone views it on a 17" screen and someone else views it on a 13" screen the frame will adjust itself.. then as you said just direct the iframe to your xxxx. site and you'll get the results you're looking for. You also want to make sure your borders are invisible or not there. Some browsers will show a small border which will look like its embossed (sp), so you're gonna have to test it on firefox, safari (), and ie, but keep us updated..
 
Thanks for the replies, guys.

Obviously just uploading the WordPress install didn't work, since I don't know any database details. I emailed the administrators but I'm not sure if myPHPAdmin/Apache, etc. can be enabled.

So I think I'll try fiddling around with the frame idea. Obviously the site will then just be an index.htm. Does anyone have any idea how I would go about making the iframe? It has to be the entire window, 100% in both directions, and just point to http://xxxxxxx.wordpress.com/index.php or something similar, I imagine. Then the user's browser just handles everything, am I right?

Thing is, I don't want the embossed-type look. I imagine that's what this MacRumors quick-reply is. A frame within the post. And it's got a rather ugly border around it. And the frame has to be resizable of course. If the window is reduced in size, the only scrollbar that appears should be the frame's scrollbar, right?

Etc.

Argh. Pretty crappy solution to a basic problem. I wish the U of T webspace was better!

Is it easy to create in Dreamweaver? Cheers.
 
Not sure if this will work but you can try this:

<html>
<title>Webpage title</title>

<frameset cols="100%">
<frame src="http://xxxx.wordpress.com">
</frameset>

</html>

I'm not positive if you need a frameset with only one frame. I've never used it before. Too bad you can't just have a redirect because that would be much simpler.
 
m3kilpat said:
Not sure if this will work but you can try this:

<html>
<title>Webpage title</title>

<frameset cols="100%">
<frame src="http://xxxx.wordpress.com">
</frameset>

</html>

I'm not positive if you need a frameset with only one frame. I've never used it before. Too bad you can't just have a redirect because that would be much simpler.
Click to expand...

A redirect just reroutes you to the wordpress page though, am I right? She wants 'utoronto' to be in the URL.

This is what I have right now:

Code: 
<IFRAME SRC="http://xxxxxxx.wordpress.com" WIDTH=100% HEIGHT=100% frameborder=0 border=0 framespacing=0>
</IFRAME>

But that produces a 5-px or so border around the edge of the website for some reason. Any ideas? I've tried using a simple style sheet but for some reason that reduces the frame's height to like, 100px tall (it doens't change size when you resize the window) but it does get rid of the border.

I'll give your suggestion try, m3kil. Thanks!

[Edit] It totally works, m3kilpat! Thanks so much! The border's gone! The website is entirely self-contained and hosted on wordpress.com. Awesome!

Cheers! :) Thanks again.
 
No problem. I'm surprised it was that easy because things usually aren't. Most of the time you need to jerry rig something, and the fact that I've never done what you're doing.
 
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