Should I use Automad?

[duskforged]

Hello everyone!

I'm very inexperienced with websites, coding, and CMSes, so please bear with me.

For a very long time, I've always wanted a portfolio/project website. I bounced around between free options for the last half-decade or so, and this year I decided to buy my own domain for the first time, as well as web hosting. I tried using WordPress at first, because it was recommended strongly to me, but it was frustrating to use and difficult to wrap my head around due to its set-up. It was also rather laggy.

I came across Automad as an alternative (among many others, like Kirby and ConcreteCMS), and I was wondering if I should use it. I would have to manually down load it to my webhost's file server, which is itself not a problem. But like I said, I'm not all that experienced, and a bit worried it wouldn't fit my needs. It's a little overwhelming to read the docs, though that's more of a me problem than the actual docs themselves.

For the site, I would like a landing page (that would also serve as an 'about'), with links to my projects. For the portfolio section, all I would need would be a series of pages that splits up the content by year, and within each page just a series of stacked images. The comic is more what I'm worried about- would I have to have every single page listed in the sidebar? That seems somewhat excessive! I'd also like a 'previous' and 'next' pagination for each page, and I'm unsure if Automad supports that (at least at the moment).

I do apologize if this is a little bit newbie-ish of me to ask! Thank you for reading.

[marcantondahmen]

Hi, I guess that all features you describe are supported by Automad out of the box. However, you have to decide on the structure of your site. You can have a sidebar or not and you can put content wherever you want. It's a very flexible system. I would recommend you to play around with the demo before making a decision. I would also recommend you to go with version 2.

[duskforged]

Thank you! I've definitely taken a look around and I think it suits my needs for the most part. It's very promising, and doesn't look like it has an overly steep learning curve.

One question I had: while most of the page templates from the default theme seem to hit the mark for what I need (e.g. 'post' for an index, 'project' for individual comic pages, for example), would I be able to create custom templates? Or would that be better suited to the 'components' feature?

Additionally, I seem to be having issues deleting blocks in the demo, and despite the docs saying that blocks should default to being centered (as I did see on the main landing page of the demo), I can't seem to get them centered. I am not discounting the possibility I'm doing something wrong though!

[marcantondahmen]

Yes, everyone can create develop custom templates. There is a comprehensive guide in the docs.

I am not sure if I understand the second question. What did you do and do you want to achieve?