Website Building

[friznit]

Anyone got any hints on how to go about hiring someone to build a website? I have a vague knowledge, but no time, but I can sort out dev sites, sql db's and FTP stuff, but don't really have the time to learn anymore html to do it properly, let alone optimise for shmartfoon usage, which is apparently de rigeur these days. It's not a complicated requirement - just your regular ArmA2 shiny clan site with an embedded CMS for easy to add 'blog' content (also, I despise WordPress). Willing to fork out a reasonable amount to make it go.

[buzzmong]

I know Tezz, Grimmie and co will balk at this suggestion but: Dreamweaver pehaps?

[FatherJack]

Wordpress is a CMS... Pick another one, install it then learn how to operate it - you usually don't need to know any code unless you want to customise it heavily. The basic idea of them is that your content is just text, which you plop into the boxes in the CMS, put them where you want on the screen and apply templates to prettify.

Behind the scenes they are all a website plus an SQL database - that will be Apache+MySQL for the most part though some support IIS+MSSQL, many hosting companies, such as Dreamhosts, just have one-click easy installs. Supplying new content is a case of logging in to the back end and entering/pasting it, you shouldn't need to FTP anything.

Popular ones include Joomla, Drupal, Concrete, ModX and TextPattern. Tumblr is another all-done-for-you (hosting and everything) one geared towards blogs like Wordpress. I personally favour the latter two, because of the ease of use and mountain of custom stuff available for nothing. Of the others I rather liked Concrete, but almost anything beyond basic designs is paid-for. At work we use Kentico and DotNetNuke, but we have a professional design team which does not include me.

[friznit]

I like the idea of Concrete5 after playing with it - almost WYSIWYG editing on the site itself is appealing, but it looks clunky and a bit rubbish in the end. I dislike WP because it's bloaty and a pain in the arse to get the formatting right for the front page. I might have to try ModX and TP though if you recommend them. A really simple click front page, add picture & text, hit save is all I'm after really - ideally with the Web2 style move boxes around thing, all on a nice pretty background.

I've acheived this much so far: http://www.dev.volcbat.com/ (less the buttons, which I'll add later).

Just need to figure our a way to make the middle bit 'editable' by content monkies using some sort of monkey see monkey do CMS that doesn't end up looking crap.

[fabyak]

+1 for Drupal. I built a site for work using that about 5 years back knowing nothing about websites and it's still in use now and looks fairly good. Piece of piss to customise and add things into (For extra functionality find module on Drupal website. Download to host. Extract. Copy to modules folder. Go to website and tick a box to activate it. Piece of piss)

Apologies for the excessive use of full stops. The comma key on my keyboard has packed in