Looking for advice

Vikings

Hello, i've been given the "opportunity" to look after my football clubs website which hasn't been updated since last year when it was first made.

The website is www.rhinos.ie, the site is there and hosting etc. etc. is all done so the only thing needed is some way to update the site or to take it in a new direction maybe which is where I am looking for some advice.

I have no way of contacting the person who made the site and I am not sure what program he used to make it, if any? (maybe someone here would know?)

I'd like to be able to keep the site as is but figure out how to add a little freedom to updating it, adding media to it mostly pictures and video clips. I have the site downloaded here with all the html, css and images - is it as simple as just adding in new stuff to them? What program would you recommend for that?

I know these are very general questions and I apologise for that but I havn't been even attempting anything near web design in a long time so i'm pretty far behind the times at this stage.

If anyone could throw some suggestions/advice on the site and how to update it I would really appreciate it, even if the advice is to start over. (I have been looking at templates but from what I have read this may not be the ideal way to go)

Thanks!

p

One suggestion i'd have is looking at TeamSnap (http://www.teamsnap.com/) - it's a commercial 'team website' tool for building and maintaining team sites. It has all the things you need, video, galleries, as well as tools for managing results and rosters, and all for a fraction of the price that it'd cost to get someone to build that functionality on to your existing site.

There's a 30 day trial, so you could take a look and see if it fits your needs.

Eoin

If you want to easily update fixtures, results, match reports and tables and link these altogether, then there will be a bit of work involved. If you don't go for a database driven site then you'll probably end up with a site that takes much longer to update and without all the information being linked.

I don't know if there are many off-the-shelf frameworks that cater for this. I've heard that there are some extensions to Joomla that might help, but I never looked into them.

Another option might be to use www.pitchero.com - it's a free service specifically designed for sport clubs. There are a few downsides however:

1) No domain masking, so you either have to redirect to their site from your domain, or use frames to mask it.
2) Very limited customisation
3) Slow, unintuitive and inflexible admin interface

On the plus side, you can add fixtures, results, reports and all that stuff as well as photos and videos. It also has membership functionality, so players can sign up as members, update their own profiles and use the forum. It's also good for collaboration so you can share out the responsibility.

Vikings

Thanks for the suggestions guys, I do like the look and functionality of them two sites but i'm a little unsure of the customisation like you say. The club is developing and the website is going to become an important feature in letting people know who we are and what we are about.

We have a lot of multimedia and I have a little experience with photoshop that could help give it a very unique feel to it - if only I knew how! I've sent a message to the guy who created it looking for a bit of advice also so hope to hear back from him.

Eoin

It looks like both sites seem to be quite limited for customisation, so that might be an issue. I'd give one or both a go though - you might find that making a completely customised site isn't really as much a priority as being able to easily update content and upload photos and videos.

It may be worth using it for a while until you can get a proper database driven site up and running.