Need some advice please!

I created the following site back in 2012 using RW5 ( www2.st-john.or.jp ) with much assistance from several people who have now left the scene. Last year I eventually upgraded to RW8 - with much difficulty, and now my project files are corrupt due to outdated stacks. Some of them have not been updated in the meantime and while alternatives have been suggested, a big problem is that out site is not “Responsive”. I’m now left with two alternatives.

  1. try to resurrect the old site with stacks that do work.
  2. create a new site with a theme that is “responsive”.

The main requirement is that the site has to be, at least for the moment, bilingual, and in the future possibly trilingual. Which comes to:
3. the theme has to be able to cope with Japanese as its main language and English. In future, Vietnamese.

I have the main stacks already: RWML, Stacks4, Pluskit 4. I also have a load of other stacks and plugins which may or not be of help.

Can anybody suggest a theme which would cover my needs please? I have to admit that I tried to get somebody to upgrade or redo our site but kinda fell on deaf ears. Hahaha I add, that I haven’t touched RW since I created the first site so I am extremely rusty to say the lease.

Thanking you in advance
Sister Sabina
St. John’s Congregation
Tokyo, JAPAN

Maybe @yuzoolthemes could offer you some advice, as i know he lives in Japan

1 Like

Thank you Channonite for your suggestion. However, I already did that some time ago and they couldn’t assist me other than to use their forum. I also tried contacting several other people who may be willing to redo the site for us but kinda fell on deaf ears. Not that I blame them. William Woodgate has been extremely helpful in making suggestions and I am now trying to follow through with those. Some of the stacks which I used back in 2012 are no longer supported and so I have had to either repurchase or get other alternatives. Instead of trying to resurrect the old site I am now going to redo the whole thing as was also suggested. Many thanks to William. Also thanks to Marc for his blog stack which saved my day there too.

Dear Sabina, I am using RW only for my own website and am no ‘professional’ developer. However, I do live in Osaka, which might make it easier to help without any time lag. I do use the RWML stacks to build a website for multiple languages - they work very well for me. In order to not fall into the trap of spending lots of money on many stacks (something I have done earlier), my suggestion to redo your page would be to use eg the ‘Source’ micro framework, which would provide all the flexibility to create a responsive website, create a lean, fast loading site, and you could still use the stacks you already have. I am about to build another website with ‘Source’ and would be glad to help you along when needed. If you are interested, let me know, we can get in contact and take it from there. Cheers

3 Likes

… forgot to mention, that the ‘Source’ framework is free, and some additional powerful stack extension is rather affordable. I like the approach to start simple, yet powerful, and add functionality as needed, instead of going for the fully loaded and pricy full frameworks right from the start.

2 Likes

And if you do fancy going this route with @GKs then (seeing as it’s Christmas 🎄) I am happy to donate the add-on stacks! You can let me know…

2 Likes

Thank you very much for your kindness. I will certainly look into “Source” more fully and get back to you.

Happy New Year

I would agree that using Source is definitely the best way to go. You will only have to learn how to use a handful of stacks and there is also the Source Academy if you need a proper learning resource.

There are a load of helpful Source users on this forum so feel free to ask for any help or guidance.

You should grab Stuarts kind offer.

If you go the Source route and want a template to get you started, my new free Source template: New York, is going to be available soon.

https://www.templaterepo.com/demos/newyork/

1 Like

Yes, I think “Source” would be best. I downloaded all the graphics from the current site, whilst working through the Source tutorials that Habitualshaker allowed me to have so kindly. Early days as yet of course. Biggest problem for me will be getting the bilingual (RWML) set up. But I drew up a plan which I will be following today regards what I want to include in the Japanese/English trees. Once I get the RWML done then hopefully it will be a little easier. I would definitely like to take Gerd up on his offer of help in the latter case, seeing as he has had plenty of experience in that area. Your offer is certainly much appreciated too.

Thank you
Sr. Sabina

1 Like