I just joined this group and know very little about website development or how to use this chat. I have a very specialized background as you can see here. I have created many websites using Google Sites. Even though Google Sites is easy to use, it still took me a long time to learn how to use it. I have a need to create a website for a large group of people and it needs to be private. The only way to keep a Google Site private is if all the users have a Google account, which is not true in my case. I asked several AIās what to do. I suggested something maybe like mediawiki. They initially suggested Dokuwiki which I tried to use, but it was so restrictive about formatting that I concluded there must be something better. Then AI suggested Grav. I love the Grav documentation, but I do not have the experience or knowledge that professional web developers have so Iām sort of lost. I searched for tutorial videos on Grav, but the ones that exist, in my opinion, are not helpful for me. The Grav documentation is good, but for someone like me, I need to see how a specific thing is done and then show the outcome. For example, apparently it is possible to have a left, scrollable navigation panel which is easy to do in Google Sites, but I have no idea how to do that in Grav. I do not believe I will have a problem with creating pages in Grav, but the rest of it seems over my head and very confusing to me. It seems like one has to have a ton of experience in developing websites in order to use Grav effectively. For someone like me, I donāt know if I can use it or not. I think I need a lot more good instructional things like good videos which illustrate how to do specific things.
Is Grav intended to be used only by experienced website developers?
Is Grav intended to be used only by experienced website developers?
No not really. Although Grav has been build with developers in mind, which gives developers a wealth of power, many users of Grav have little experience in web development.
Most shared hosting providers have a way to automatically install Grav from a list of applications. In that case, little or no OS commands are needed.
Once installed, Grav Admin, allows one to:
Install themes (look and feel of site) and plugins (added functionality)
Configure the site, themes and plugins.
Create users and set their permissions
Create pages and edit content
Create backups
etc.
Having said thatā¦
Once you require functionality or page layouts that is not provided by a theme or plugin out-of-the-box, you will need to get your hands dirty. Meaning:
You will need to open a text/code editor to edit Twig scripts.
To refactor the layout of a page
To add a code snippet to add a plugin adding functionality to a page
And when you get stuck, there are helpful volunteers here or on Discord to help you out.
For someone who is relatively inexperienced in website development and deployment but would like to develop a proficiency in using Grav, what is the first step you would recommend they do? Normally, I would attempt to understand the documentation and then I would look for instructional videos on YouTube, but the videos I find on YouTube about Grav have not been helpful for me, and a number of things mentioned in the documentation Iāve never heard of before and am unfamiliar with. At one time in the past I did go through a very good YouTube tutorial on HTML and CSS so I am a little familiar with that, but thatās it except for my experience in developing sites using Google Sites.
Iāve never searched for videos (donāt like the linearity of it and I prefer to jump around), but from comments Iāve read here, there arenāt many videos.
I would create a few installations if possible in three subfolders to get examples of three different types of pages: default, blog (aka list) and one-page.
grav-dev
Install plain Grav + Admin, to play around. It shows the most basic page layout. It uses the poster theme Quark.
grav-blog
Unzip skeleton Blog Site into this folder. It shows you the concept of a blog (aka list) pages. Uses theme Quark.
grav-onepage
Unzip skeleton One-Page Site, which shows the concepts of single pages. Uses theme Quark.
Once installed, you can follow the docs and switch back and forth between the three sites and the docs.
Youāve got to build some insight in the philosophy of Grav which is a file based CMS. Knowing HTML and CSS is useful, but forget the concepts of Google Sites because it might hinder you grasping Grav.
Read the docs from the beginning:
Section ā1. Basicsā to build insight in the concepts of Grav, like configuration, folder structure.
Section ā2. Contentā to learn about page types, markdown, frontmatter, etc.
Sections ā3. Themesā and ā4. Pluginsā, is more about coding.
I think most likely I am not experienced enough with modern website design tools or too old to effectively use Grav. Hereās my experience in downloading Grav. I got stuck trying to do it myself. I then asked ChatGPT for help. That failed. Then I asked Googleās AI Gemini for help. It took me a long time just to get it working. I also am unfamiliar with all kinds of things Grav uses like YAML, Twig, and many other things. For those who understand all those things and have used them repeatedly, itās simple, but for someone like me, it isnāt simple.
By the way, most modern YouTube instructional videos have time stamps so you can jump to whatever section you are interested in without having to watch the whole video.
With any programming training being almost 50 years ago, (Fortran 77 and assembler) I came from a similar place regarding āmodernā programming.
Grav is relatively easy to use, well documented and a lot more flexible than most āonlineā solutions consequently there are few āthis is what you doā videos.
I have built a number of sites but still struggle with Twig (which most of the time I donāt need to access - just tweak) and just about understand YAML - which is relatively easy to learn.
The documentation is good.
If you are interested and want to learn then I can make a suggestion based on what I did.
Download a local portable test server, I can recomend Laragon or Uniform server which donāt need installation
Add Grav (simple instructions online) and look through the themes section to find something you like (or use the default one) - or similar to what you want - this gives you a good foundation.
You can then then just play with the pages (yaml based) without delving into twig.
The documentation really is comprehensive on that.
After that you can modify the twig to change the structure if required.
I would like to learn how to use Grav, but, as of now, something is missing. I do not understand some very basic concepts that, I assume, the rest of you take for granted. I will continue to read the documentation, and hope for some kind of āahaā moment to happen which hasnāt happened for me yet.
My guess is that the majority of people who are active on this chat have many years of experience regarding website design, and itās easy for those with lots of experience to take for granted that others know certain elementary things that they may not know. I have no experience with website design. Zero.
There are different types of people. Some, like Ben Carson, learn best by reading - others learn best by lectures. I learn best by lectures. Here is an example of some excellent YouTube playlists about web design. I watched one list and learned a lot. Here is a playlist of lectures on cryptography which I watched and completely understood, but, before I watched that playlist, I thought cryptography would be too difficult for me to understand.
I need to have a reasonable level of understanding before I can ask meaningful questions. I donāt feel like I have that level yet.
If anyone has looked at the AI links I posted, you will see that it took me a long time to get Grav to run. Why is that? I thought it was supposed to be simple to download it and get it to run. It seems to me that if there are certain things that need to be done (certain requirements) before Grav can be downloaded and run, shouldnāt they be stated? It took me about two days with the help of two AIās to get it to run. I assume the primary reason is because of my lack of knowledge.
On Windows I use Laragon. Download, extract to the www/project folder and it loads straight away on project.local (depending on TLD config in Laragon)
When I have achieved what I want on my machine, I simply upload the files via sFTP to my hosting provider and it works right away. Never had any issues
@Karmalakas If I had your level of knowledge, Iām sure I would have had no problem in understanding the requirements and how to quickly install Grav on Windows 11, but, as Iāve said repeatedly, Iām trying to figure out how to obtain more knowledge to get to your level. Iām not there yet.
I started to use a program (I donāt remember the name of it) that allowed one to create websites without knowing any HTML or CSS probably 20 years ago or more. That company was acquired by Google and Google subsequently redesigned everything and call it New Google Sites. The old sites are now called Classic Sites. Many people, including me, liked the fact that they could create a website without having to know anything about HTML, CSS, or any other website design-related thing and didnāt have to know anything about web servers or hosting. I was happy with that also, but I now have a need (actually a want - not really a need) for a private site that a large number of people can access which cannot be done with Google Sites unless all the users have a Google account - which they do not - so Iām trying to find a way to do that. A couple AIās said Grav would be a way. Thatās why Iām trying to learn about how to use it. However, I know nothing about web servers or hosting websites or the associated software needed to do that. Most likely I read the Requirements section in the Grav documentation, but I did not comprehend what I was reading since I didnāt know what most of the terms even mean.
@pamtbaau I thought I could just download something and run it, but I was mistaken. I didnāt contact AI until I couldnāt do it myself. In the past, Iāve found AI to be very good. Thatās why asked them for help. I wasnāt in this chat group at that time. Sometimes I bite off more than I can chew or am over confident.
Iām not sure if I have the ability to ever master Grav. One time I really wanted to learn Blender, and I spent literally I think thousands of hours trying to master it and had to eventually give up because it seemed clear to me that the only people who mastered it were people who had been using it for years and years 24/7, and I wasnāt able to do that.
I think I was thinking that Grav was free/open source software similar to Gimp, Blender, Inkscape or LibreOffice and all I had to do was download it and execute it. Obviously, that is not the case as I found out the hard way.
The other thing is, I donāt want to waste your time having to answer stupid questions.
I was very reluctant to post anything on this chat site to start with, but decided to give it a try.
I do not understand why those who have commented here think Iām asking for help to install Grav on a Windows 11 PC. I had Grav installed before I made my first post as I stated.
I will delete this whole sequence of comments If thatās what everyone prefers. Iāve never used this type of chat, but I assume I can do that. It probably doesnāt make any sense for me to involved here.
Iām almost 78 years old, retired, and only doing this when I have time. Iāve got lots of other things to do.
What I was attempting to achieve was to get some general understanding at a high-level of the concepts involved. As I stated earlier, Iāve done that in the past by viewing YouTube videos, but there arenāt any good instructional videos to watch about Grav as far as I can see.
My objective is to find a way to privately communicate via a website with a large number of people. I am not interested in getting involved in any more technical detail than necessary. If I could do that with Google Sites, I would, but I canāt.
No need to delete anything. Iām just completely lost - youāre kind of asking how to use Grav, but at the same time basically not asking anything specific. Itās really difficult to understand where youāre stuck
For most of my life Iāve focused on designing hardware encoders and decoders for error-correcting codes. Thatās what I know. I am not a programmer. I do not have a degree in computer science. I have a degree in electrical engineering. I have never taken any actual courses on website design, hosting, etc. So I am ignorant about those things.
I have used Google Sites a lot, and I try to somehow relate what I know from Google Sites to understand Grav, but it doesnāt work. I understand themes in Google Sites, but it appears to me that themes are completely different in Grav. I know how to make a copy of a Google Site and use the copy as a template for a new site, but I have no idea how that is done with Grav. I can easily create scrollable side bar navigation in Google Sites with one setting, but have no idea how to do that in Grav. Google Sites handles everything that has to do with serving the site and hosting the site, so all those things like XAMPP, I know nothing about. I never heard the term XAMPP before. Iāve never worked with PHP before. Iāve coded in Fortran, Pascal and C, but not PHP. I donāt understand how a PC can be a server and also, at the same time, how a web browser on the same PC can receive what is being served. Is a server a task or set of tasks that execute PHP code? I donāt know. I never heard of YAML. I have no idea what it is or what it is used for. There are many other things Iāve never heard of before and do not understand.
Itās like I need to take a course and learn those things, but there is no way to do that. Itās very difficult to pick up the concepts from reading the Grav documentation.
Why is that so difficult to understand?
If I wanted to learn about error-correcting codes, Iād take a class on coding theory or information theory. It would be very difficult to learn the subject just by reading a text book.
I think this is not the place to do that. I think I should delete this thread and continue to try to learn some other way. Maybe if I reread the documentation enough times maybe something will sink in.
Stop comparing Grav to Google Sites. Forget Google Sites. These are completely different things. You will need to learn grab from scratch
As it was suggested before, download Grav and Laragon. See Laragon docs how to run a web page. Extract Grav to Laragon www folder and run it in browser. Thatās it. You donāt need to understand how it works under the hood.
I know basically nothing about server configuration and I donāt want to know. I simply extract Grav files to Laragon or hosting domain folder and it works.
Twig is just a template engine where you were your HTML templates. Yaml is pretty much the same as JSON, but different syntax and in Grav is used for configs
IMHO your problem is, that youāre too much fixated on how Google Sites work and you want Grav to also work the same
I do not want Grav to work the same as Google Sites. Why would you think that?
I completely understand that Grav and Google Sites are different things, but they result in the same thing - a website. So, in that regard, their function is the same. They just do it in different ways.
Anyway, I agree that this conversation is not benefiting anyone so itās best for me or someone else to delete the whole thing. However, I donāt see how to do it so could someone please tell me how to do it or do it yourself if you can? Thanks.
