website creation software: new solutions?

davidclayton

i used to work in web design, and pretty much used dreamweaver exclusively, but as per the norm on the net, things move very quickly. i recently set up a ning site for a friend of mine, and it was SO easy. a couple of hours work, and i was able to create it online, and it looks and works fantastically. also it's FREE. fair enough, it can start to cost a bit if the site starts getting some heavier traffic, but for his needs, it's perfect as it's only for a small club.

a cousin recently contacted me, asking me if i could put together a simple site for her, and of course i could create it in dreamweaver, but this has some drawbacks; if she wants to edit it in the future, she can with 'contribute' (does this still exist?), but i never found that easy to use for novices. so with the continual release of new products on the web (like ning), i thought i'd ask on here; are there any downloadable software packages, or online website creation sites out there that are easy to use for novices? maybe even something i can plonk on top of the site after i create it in dreamweaver?

all help appreciated.

p

I'd recommend Wordpress. It's not going to offer you a nice drap and dorp interface, but there's tons and tons of free themes out there that you can get for free (or buy for cheap) and it'll allow you to update it all easily. If you want to do a custom design, then you can always modify something that's close to what you need.

davidclayton

yeah, i've played about with wordpress recently (www.area52.ie/apps), but it's hard to get away from it looking like a blog. it's definitely an option, but am interested to see if there are other solutions out there.

p

What kind of site is it? I've seen loads of sites that look very un-bloggy. The main thing is getting a good base theme.

davidclayton

i haven't got all the details yet, but i'm guessing a simple brochure site with 5-10 pages.

Hoku

I recently discovered concrete5. Powered by MySQL (mysql5 recommended) and PHP5. Requires cURL to be enabled.
The user structure is fairly useless - 3 tiers: admin, registered and guest. If you're admin, you get full access with no way of restricting it. Registered users only ever see the login screen, but none of the ACP. The advantage of this group is that you can view some of the pages hidden from public. And the lowest 'class' is guests, which is basically everybody not logged in.
This seems to be a relatively new CMS, so plug-ins & extensions are scarce.

I'm playing around with it myself at the moment. You can pop over to
http://www.hokubudojo.org/c5/
to have a look.
You have to be patient though, that site is stuck on US hosting until the end of the year.

davidclayton

thanks for the info hoku, i'll look into it...

Stugots

I'm just coming up to speed on Joomla right now, but I think it looks pretty good. Lots of free templates and plugins available for extended functions. Site management interface is fairly easy to use.

lucideer

Drupal. Lean and mean: http://buytaert.net/cms-code-base-comparison

p

lucideer wrote: »

Drupal. Lean and mean: http://buytaert.net/cms-code-base-comparison

Drupal is not lean & mean by any stretch of the imagination. It's big & flexible.

ScumLord

That concret5 looks very interesting. Just installed it there and had a quick rummage around looks like a perfect solution for someone looking for an easier version of Joomla/drupal easily the easiest one to use.

If your looking for a simplistic cms concret5 looks like a winner.

lucideer

p wrote: »

Drupal is not lean & mean by any stretch of the imagination. It's big & flexible.

Define "big". If you mean it has many great features, then maybe. If you mean there's a lot of code, it takes up a lot of room, etc. then the article I linked would beg to differ wildly. It has not gone through major code changes in recent times, it's still around 7-8 times smaller than Joomla.

Hoku

ScumLord wrote: »

That concret5 looks very interesting. Just installed it there and had a quick rummage around looks like a perfect solution for someone looking for an easier version of Joomla/drupal easily the easiest one to use.

If your looking for a simplistic cms concret5 looks like a winner.

One issue with it - it's poorly documented (I think) so developing your own modules and themes for it might be a little bit of a challenge.
Other than that, it seems like a great CMS.

ScumLord

Hoku wrote: »

One issue with it - it's poorly documented (I think)

True, I don't come across any documentation. Although I didn't look to hard I just installed it for a look but it seems pretty straight forward even though it I couldn't find a straightforward way of linking to new content that I'd created. I'm going to have a go making something with it at the weekend.

gimme5minutes

lucideer wrote: »

Define "big". If you mean it has many great features, then maybe. If you mean there's a lot of code, it takes up a lot of room, etc. then the article I linked would beg to differ wildly. It has not gone through major code changes in recent times, it's still around 7-8 times smaller than Joomla.

I wouldn't describe drupal as lean and mean either. Maybe if you just count the core but you'll be installing a minimum of 15 modules if you want decent functionality. Id describe drupal as big and extremely powerful.

lucideer

gimme5minutes wrote: »

Maybe if you just count the core but you'll be installing a minimum of 15 modules if you want decent functionality.

It's the same with any CMS though - just with other CMS's you're installing modules on top of bloat. Drupal starts small, and the precedent is for smaller modules.

Hoku

Actually, here something resembling documentation for concrete5:
http://www.concrete5.org/help/building_with_concrete5/developers

For other issues, you may have to address their forum.