Running An HTML / CCS Website

Pross

I have offered my services to take over running the club website as the current webmaster can no longer do it. He has asked if I have any HTML / CCS experience to which the answer is "not really" unless you count chucking a few things in tags on internet forums. I've had a quick look at some tutorials and it all seems fairly straightforward especially as the main site is already set up and it is really a case of updating it and adding new articles. Is it likely to prove difficult to someone with fairly mediocre computer skills?

Cleat Eastwood

Well every club website i've looked at has been whats called a CMS a content management system - where data and text is updated and stored on a ,mainly, sql server. If you have to fanny about with css or html then I'd say your website needs updating as all of the formatting in a cms is corrected automatically.

You shouldnt have any problems, and if it is a php/sql based site, then you're laughing, it really is a case of input the text and clicking a button.

have a look here for how easy they are to maintain

http://demo.joomla.org/

Gizmodo

Cleat Eastwood wrote:

Well every club website i've looked at has been whats called a CMS a content management system - where data and text is updated and stored on a ,mainly, sql server. If you have to fanny about with css or html then I'd say your website needs updating as all of the formatting in a cms is corrected automatically.
You shouldnt have any problems, and if it is a php/sql based site, then you're laughing, it really is a case of input the text and clicking a button.
have a look here for how easy they are to maintain
http://demo.joomla.org/

I agree with Cleat, a "Content Management System" (CMS) is the way to go. You will need to spend some time initially getting it to look the way you want it to and to copy/paste all the existing information into it, but in the long term it makes updating the site so much easier.

Joomla that Cleat linked to is the biggest and most popular.

I used a much smaller easier one called CMS Made Simple

With a CMS you have a number of page templates which you can customise. So you might have one with 3 columns and another with 1 left column and the rest of the page as 1 big column for example. You enter the content as text, using a simple on-line editor, and that is stored in a database. When someone looks at the page, the CMS puts the content together with the template and outputs the page.

Each CMS also has add-in apps that you can install. So for example you could have an "Events" type app where people could apply for an event, or "Photo Gallery" app that means you can simply upload a load of photos and it will organise and display them automatically.

There are hundreds to choose from: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_management_systems#Open_source_software

Pross

Thanks both. I had originally assumed it would be along those lines and I would just need the access passwords to get in and make changes but apparently it is currently using HTML / CCS. I'm not really in a position to suggest they change it at the moment.

t.m.h.n.e.t

+1 for CMS software

One Man And His Bike

Best bet is WordPress, raw coding HTML/CSS becomes a chore and it is not time effective especially if other people want to have input, edit or author pages.

I used to be really into hand coding pages to W3C standards but once a site grows beyond a certain size keeping up with it is a serious pain, so when I started my current main site I opted to move to something easier to manage and started looking at CMS's as the way forward, I tried a few and for simplicity, flexibility and ease of use I found WordPress to be fantastic. I ended up having to run someone else's site for a while and they used CMS Made Simple and I found it to be a horrible system that really was not as simple nor as intuitive as WordPress.

Combined with SMF forums you have powerful tools at your disposal without the need for a steep and uphill learning curve and WordPress comes with a plethora of easy to use Templates and Plug-ins & Widgets to do most things you may want to do for a club site.

You can have a WordPress install up and running in an hour or two and just a while later have most if not all content ported over and working like a charm.

Updates are easy and usually require a click or two and it auto-magically sorts it out for you.

Aside from that I've found WordPress to be VERY Google and other Search Engine friendly and it's format is easy enough to understand behind the scenes if you wish to develop your skills and knowledge further as and when you have the time and inclination, the support of offer is also fantastic.

http://wordpress.org/

The link in my sig links to my WordPress site about cycling related matters, have a look and see if the feel of it suits you.

sungod

^^^this

wordpress is plenty for a cc website, your hosting company probably has it as an option (should be zero cost)

if the site is fairly static/simple, doing it manually will probably be easy enough

the real benefit of a cms is that you can give others the ability to add content direct, with no need for any technical knowledge on their part

once you do this the site can become far livelier as it's no longer reliant on one person doing everything