How to start moving a site to Processwire?

[nacheson]

Hello! 

I have been following Processwire for almost a year now and I have gone through the Planet Tutorial and a few of the other tutorials so I feel like I have a small handle on how it all works but I'm having a hard time applying it to the site I'd like to move.  Here is my current site: https://www.midwestprospect.org/  It's not pretty and is in desperate need of updating so it can grow and expand with ease, I feel like Processwire is the perfect platform to do that.  I'm just wondering how to go about changing it, should I start with the design or the mechanics (profiles, signup, registrations, etc).  I get stuck with what seems like a monumental task, I guess I just need help breaking it down into pieces, I'd also like to know if there are best practices so I don't go down the wrong road and have to back track.  I am not a professional developer, I'm a hobby developer, I don't use my skills enough to be highly proficient but I do like a good challenge and figuring things out, I just need a little hand holding or pointing in the right direction so I don't spend too much time on the wrong things!  Ok, I hope someone will take pity on me and lend a little advice :)  

I've also looked at the modules FormBuilder and I thought there was a Profile/User module of some sort but cannot remember or find it at the moment.  I'm also wondering if they would be useful for my site before I spend them money and find I don't need them.

Thank you in advance!  I am excited to become proficient so I can give back to those just starting out as well!

Natalie

[cwsoft]

Hi Natalie,

welcome to the PW forum. I would start setting up a local development env (like ddev) with a clean PW installation and a blank template. Then I would decide on a output strategy, like delayed output. Next I would create the HTML template using the look of your old site with some basic pages and the nav menu. Once that is done, I would try to implement one dynamic page (e.g. member login area) from your old site and see how for you get. If you hit a wall on your journey, come back in the forum and ask for guidance. The community here is very kind and can help you on your way.

Thats how I started with PW. After the first implementation with just the PW API and basic concepts, I did a rewrite using some of the more advanced techniques like implementing the Latte template engine and PageClasses. But my first setup was just procedural PHP code organized in functions stored in helper files and basic PW PHP template files using the great PW API. That get‘s you started quickly, which I think is more important than trying to get the most sophisticated features implemented right from the beginning. I tend to go with release soon and iterate fast approach most of the times.

Just my two cents.

Cheers cwsoft

 

Edited November 16 by cwsoft

[wbmnfktr]

Find yourself a great dev environment you understand and can use to create a new ProcessWire instance super easy. This is key. Based on what I saw the most complicated part seems to be the registration/and what follows afterwards (which I of course can't see). You need to find out if you can do this with PHP and PW on your own, with some community modules or the LoginRegisterPro module from Ryan.

Everything else seems to be basic content with an advanced structure. Maybe some specials for logged in users but this should be quite easy to do the moment you have that registration part set up.

Depending on how fit you are with programmig and PHP a little crash & burn session over the weekend should be a great starter for you to find the issues and questions you need to have answered to get your site moved to ProcessWire.

I'm not a programmer, still I can do a lot.
Sure, I need LoginRegisterPro and have to ask questions here and there, but ProcessWire is still the easiest tool I ever used for that.

Nowadays maybe even use Cursor, Supermaven, Claude Sonnet, and other AI tools to assist you. Feed them the ProcessWire docs and you can get a great headstart.

In the meantime: we are here and happy to help

[wbmnfktr]

How is it going @nacheson - did you see any progress and tried some things?
How can we help/assist to keep you going?