LebGeeks

Kassem

Member

Inspiration Needed

Hey guys,

So I've received a new project which I'll be working on over the next few weeks. I will be building a website for a village in Bekaa called Tamnine El Fawka. The client is actually the municipality of the village. The purpose of the website is to show off some of the village's touristic sites (there will be a gallery), introduce visitors to the village and its history, and provide the visitors easy access to some of the official municipality forms.

Unfortunately, the website is going to be in Arabic. I've built an Arabic website before but that was a long time ago (it was actually my first project for a client). Are there any technical stuff I should be aware of to make the website look good, mainly the CSS of the site?

Also, I'd appreciate it if you guys would give me some suggestions concerning the design of the website. What type of layout do you think would be good for this type of website? What about the colors and typography? And if you know of any Arabic websites that actually look good, please share the links.

P.S: No government websites do not look good, I guess we all agree on this one :)

Thanks in advance!

Last edited by Kassem (November 9 2010)

Georges

Member

Re: Inspiration Needed

Why working on everything from scratch. You can use a wordpress theme.
Here's my favorite website for themes : Elegant Themes.

If you don't want to use wordpress, you can still check the themes for ideas. Especially the photo galleries available, fonts and layout.

Last edited by Georges Raad (November 9 2010)

rolf

Member

Re: Inspiration Needed

You should set everything to UTF-8, the encoding (through META tag or HTTP header), save the file in UTF-8 (should be an option in your editor), the database and tables if any...
In HTML there is an attribute that goes like dir="rtl" (for direction = right to left), might be useful in arabic sometimes.
I did a multilingual website, and I used a PHP function in my template, like that:

l("enter your name", "entrez votre nom", "شمسينت شسميبنتش سيمبن")

Some people use language files, but I prefer the above approach because it lets you have all languages together in the same place, it's easier to maintain and more intuitive then a language file with keys.
Note that you may have to redo some templates for arabic since it's right to left.

Kassem

Member

Re: Inspiration Needed

@Georges: Suggest something specific! If you please...  But no, I'm not going to use WordPress because I believe it's an over-kill. Maybe I could find some simple template, re-create it in Photoshop and get done with it.

@rolf: Thanks for the tips man. I actually suggested internationalization of the website in the proposal I sent to the municipality but they weren't interested. So the whole website is going to be in Arabic. About the dir="rtl", is that an attribute for some of the tags? In the case shouldn't I be using CSS alternatives?

MrClass

Member

Re: Inspiration Needed

well, you can use joomla and joomfish to translate your website. Then you'll be able to have the site same both in english and arabic. I also recommend you make a virtual tour for the area. You can use a software called Panorama 3D to create an interactive Quick Time media file, then stream the .mov file in your site. I've done it before and alot of users like the feature. Dont forget to integrate google maps in the site, it would be awesome to make it easier for visitors to know the exact location.

Kassem

Member

Re: Inspiration Needed

well, you can use joomla and joomfish to translate your website. Then you'll be able to have the site same both in english and arabic. I also recommend you make a virtual tour for the area. You can use a software called Panorama 3D to create an interactive Quick Time media file, then stream the .mov file in your site. I've done it before and alot of users like the feature. Dont forget to integrate google maps in the site, it would be awesome to make it easier for visitors to know the exact location.

Those are some great ideas there MrClass! I like the interactive tour thing, I could probably create it in Flash if the .mov file is a bit too heavy, is it? Other than that, the Google Maps integration should be very easy and straight forward, I've used the Google Maps API before.

Thanks for the suggestions man, keep them coming! :)

spicydesign

Member

Re: Inspiration Needed

if you're looking to use a template and modify it the you don't need inspiration .
if you're going to design something yourself then yeah you need it and if I was going to design a website for a village, then I won't bother looking for inspiration anywhere but in the village itself (btw, think about large background image website style, they're trendy these days, and it should be something good for such a website).
good sources of inspiration (online) cssmania.com, cssremix.com.

if the website is only in arabic then all what you need to do is add the direction css property to your body and this will take care of everything.

body {direction:rtl;}

also I'm not sure why you don't want to use wordpress, it's very easy to manage, and in your case all what you need to worry about is coding the page template, it will be easier later to add/modify content.
and for the backend just enable the pages section and hide anything related to blog posts... you can use a plugin like wp-lite to do that.

Cheers
Alex

Kassem

Member

Re: Inspiration Needed

if you're looking to use a template and modify it the you don't need inspiration .
if you're going to design something yourself then yeah you need it and if I was going to design a website for a village, then I won't bother looking for inspiration anywhere but in the village itself (btw, think about large background image website style, they're trendy these days, and it should be something good for such a website).
good sources of inspiration (online) cssmania.com, cssremix.com.

LOL no I'm not going to use a pre-made template, I consider that as being sleazy. And about the inspiration, I've already asked the client to send me some of the content of the website in addition to some photographs taken in the village. About the large background image, I'm thinking maybe I could use a large image from the website and blur it out, then use a container with some transparency to hold the content of the website. But I'm afraid the background image might be too "heavy". But in case I decided to use that, do you think that blurring out the background is a good idea and what size (dimensions) should the image be? Something around 1600x1200px?

if the website is only in arabic then all what you need to do is add the direction css property to your body and this will take care of everything.

Yeah I could also use the following:

<html lang="ar">
<head>
<meta charset="utf-8" />
</head>
.
.
.
</html>

And finally, about WordPress, I haven't used it in a while. I used to use it only for blogs, I'm not sure what it can be used for now. I'll have to look into it.

Thanks a lot Alex, I appreciate your help!