after school club website

bungaro79

Hi all,
I'm in the process of creating an after school club and am looking into getting a good website made for it. The .ie domain is available so if I buy this does it mean I'll have it forever or do I pay a fee every year?? And for the hosting, I don't really need any email addresses or huge storage so should I be able to get this pretty cheap??
The website will mainly bw there to function as a weekly record of what we do in the club and I would like to be able to update it with photos and content of what we do. If possible too I would like an easy way to link it with our school's twitter and Facebook accounts.
I will have a logo sorted in the next week so its just the design of the rest of the site that I am looking for a price for. I've read on here that you don't want to get something too cheap so on the above info what would people think I'd be budgeting for??
Apologies if lots of these questions have been asked before, am working off my phone so am pretty limited with my phone as the crowd putting I the water meters have gone through the broadband cable in our part of the town so can't use the laptop!

Thanks

waynerooney

bungaro79 wrote: »

Hi all,
I'm in the process of creating an after school club and am looking into getting a good website......
Apologies if lots of these questions have been asked before, am working off my phone so am pretty limited with my phone as the crowd putting I the water meters have gone through the broadband cable in our part of the town so can't use the laptop!

Thanks

you've to pay a fee each year for the domain - maybe €15 per year or so.
Basic hosting won't cost more than €30 / year give or take.
Sounds like a pretty basic site you're looking for so don't pay more than €300.

Graham

A .ie domain name will €20 - €25 per year.
Basic hosting €50 per year (or €5 month) unless you go with one of the US/UK mega hosts or a back-bedroom hosting 'company' (personally I wouldn't).

Buy your domain name from your chosen hosting provider for the smoothest setup process.

You haven't really given enough detail about your proposed website for anyone to give you a proper price. From the limited information provided, sounds like a WordPress blog would suit you in which case you could look at one of the many premium themes' to get a style you like.

Themeforest has hundreds of themes, choose one you like with the FEWEST add-ons. It might appear to be better value to get the theme with dozens of plugins included, don't do it unless you absolutely need them.

If you're technically confident, you could set this all up yourself. If not, talk to your chosen hosting company and ask if they have a script to setup WordPress for you.

Kenny Logins

What about Wordpress.com?

tenifan

bungaro79 wrote: »

I will have a logo sorted in the next week so its just the design of the rest of the site that I am looking for a price for.

A wordpress blog would probably do. Don't pay hundreds for web design.. approach local institutes of technology and you'll find a graphics design student who can design a few professional banners and backgrounds, or web design students who can set up the wordpress pages however you like and train you how to use it. This will count towards their course work and you'll benefit from free web design (you can throw them a few quid if you like).

Don't bother with message boards if it's for use by students. They would not be used, or end up more trouble than they're worth.

You should be able to get a local company to sponsor the site to cover fees.

Red Hare

I would recommend a Wordpress.com site - its easy to set up and use- I 'm a teacher and its perfect for use in school. I bought my own domain name from Wordpress.com for about 15 euro - there is no fee for hosting. The site is free.

Is important not to confuse Wordpress.com with Wordpress.org -i tried that and found it very dificult to figure out. Wordpress.com is the way to go!

bungaro79

thanks for all the replies and great advice.

i had a quick look there at wordpress and am i right in thinking it would mean i would have to have .wordpress.com at the end instead of being able to buy a .ie and use that with it. if its as simple as people say then it sounds like an option if i could use it with a domain name i bought.

otherwise the gist i'm getting is that if its a straight forward website then i shouldn't be paying for more than a few hundred euro, and maybe even better if i can get a web design student to help out and pay then and give them experience.

Kenny Logins

bungaro79 wrote: »

thanks for all the replies and great advice.

i had a quick look there at wordpress and am i right in thinking it would mean i would have to have .wordpress.com at the end instead of being able to buy a .ie and use that with it. if its as simple as people say then it sounds like an option if i could use it with a domain name i bought.

otherwise the gist i'm getting is that if its a straight forward website then i shouldn't be paying for more than a few hundred euro, and maybe even better if i can get a web design student to help out and pay then and give them experience.

You can use yourname.wordpress.com free, or pay $13 p.a. to use a name (yourname.ie) you've registered elsewhere.

Give it a go, it's free. Install a theme and play a round with it.

Graham

If you choose to go the WordPress.com route you are limited to the themes and plugins they make available. You can't install 3rd party themes/plugins.

bungaro79

Graham wrote: »

A .ie domain name will €20 - €25 per year.
Basic hosting €50 per year (or €5 month) unless you go with one of the US/UK mega hosts or a back-bedroom hosting 'company' (personally I wouldn't).

Buy your domain name from your chosen hosting provider for the smoothest setup process.

You haven't really given enough detail about your proposed website for anyone to give you a proper price. From the limited information provided, sounds like a WordPress blog would suit you in which case you could look at one of the many premium themes' to get a style you like.

Themeforest has hundreds of themes, choose one you like with the FEWEST add-ons. It might appear to be better value to get the theme with dozens of plugins included, don't do it unless you absolutely need them.

If you're technically confident, you could set this all up yourself. If not, talk to your chosen hosting company and ask if they have a script to setup WordPress for you.

hi graham, when you say give you more detail can you tell me what you mean by that?? if i do go with outsourcing the website then i would like to be able to give them all the info straight away which i thought my original post contained but obviously to someone in the know like yourself i should have more!! its great to know this as i'd prefer to get exactly what i'm looking for by knowing what to ask for.

and the plug-ins you mentioned, are there certain ones you would recommend??

bungaro79

Kenny Logins wrote: »

You can use yourname.wordpress.com free, or pay $13 p.a. to use a name (yourname.ie) you've registered elsewhere.

Give it a go, it's free. Install a theme and play a round with it.

might do that alright kenny!! so i could buy mywebsite.ie, pay for that name every year but still host it on wordpress.com and setup the site on there?? you're dealing with a real noob here!

Graham

bungaro79 wrote: »

hi graham, when you say give you more detail can you tell me what you mean by that?? if i do go with outsourcing the website then i would like to be able to give them all the info straight away which i thought my original post contained but obviously to someone in the know like yourself i should have more!! its great to know this as i'd prefer to get exactly what i'm looking for by knowing what to ask for.

and the plug-ins you mentioned, are there certain ones you would recommend??

Decide what sections your site should have, these should form part of your spec.
A good start would be working out what content you plan to put on the website. If you take a look at this site: http://www.explorersafterschool.com you can see there's sections for costs, activities, location, about us etc.

Decide what plugins you would like (if any)

Plugins might only be necessary (for a WordPress site) if you want/need to add additional features. You mentioned twitter so we'll use that as an example.

If all you want to do is link to your Twitter page, there's no need for any additional plugins. If you decide you want to have your recent tweets display on your website you'd probably want a twitter feed plugin like this:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/twitter-widget-pro/screenshots/

Maybe you want to list events on your site, in which case you'd probably think about an event plugin:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/the-events-calendar/screenshots/

Perhaps you'd like all new pages on your website to be automatically added to your Facebook timeline:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/facebook/screenshots/

Decide which theme you'd like

WordPress gives you a gazillion templates to choose from. (WordPress.com not so many).

http://theme.wordpress.com <- The themes available for WordPress.com sites
http://themeforest.com <- Themes available for non WordPress.com sites

Other Non-WordPress Options
SquareSpace
Weebly
Wix

None of these are as flexible as Wordpress but they all allow you to build a website with limited/no technical ability. It's worth noting that is you decide to move away from any of these providers in the future, sites built using these services are not transferrable.


P.S. in case anyone thinks this is a pitch (OP included) it's not. I have no problem offering advice/opinions here but that's it.

Red Hare

bungaro79 wrote: »

might do that alright kenny!! so i could buy mywebsite.ie, pay for that name every year but still host it on wordpress.com and setup the site on there?? you're dealing with a real noob here!

Yep - you have it!

bungaro79

Graham wrote: »

Decide what sections your site should have, these should form part of your spec.
A good start would be working out what content you plan to put on the website. If you take a look at this site: http://www.explorersafterschool.com you can see there's sections for costs, activities, location, about us etc.

Decide what plugins you would like (if any)

Plugins might only be necessary (for a WordPress site) if you want/need to add additional features. You mentioned twitter so we'll use that as an example.

If all you want to do is link to your Twitter page, there's no need for any additional plugins. If you decide you want to have your recent tweets display on your website you'd probably want a twitter feed plugin like this:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/twitter-widget-pro/screenshots/

Maybe you want to list events on your site, in which case you'd probably think about an event plugin:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/the-events-calendar/screenshots/

Perhaps you'd like all new pages on your website to be automatically added to your Facebook timeline:

http://wordpress.org/plugins/facebook/screenshots/

Decide which theme you'd like

WordPress gives you a gazillion templates to choose from. (WordPress.com not so many).

http://theme.wordpress.com <- The themes available for WordPress.com sites
http://themeforest.com <- Themes available for non WordPress.com sites

Other Non-WordPress Options
SquareSpace
Weebly
Wix

None of these are as flexible as Wordpress but they all allow you to build a website with limited/no technical ability. It's worth noting that is you decide to move away from any of these providers in the future, sites built using these services are not transferrable.


P.S. in case anyone thinks this is a pitch (OP included) it's not. I have no problem offering advice/opinions here but that's it.

thanks graham, i'm a lot clearer in what i need to ask for when i'm tendering out the job. i might buy the domain name first and try some of the sites you mentioned, i learned about weebly in a summer course so might see how that goes.
thanks again