The Lemon Fool

FOADOAFOAF etc has asked about a simnple website for her art etc. She wants a siple site with some simple pages icnluding presumablky none for samples of her work and another for upcoming events and showings etc.

Sjhe is self admittedly non-IT literate etc.

She hasn;t discounted relying on somerone to do the updates, which would oprobasboly be me sand she undertands that there wold be a charge.|

but TBH it would be easier and more cost efficient to do these upgardes herself... I'd normally knock up0msomething like a very simp[le wordpress template site, but that wold require some savvy on her opart to update - and the WP admin GUI whilst "simple" could look quite daunting.

So... DAK of a simple, cheap/free website system/offering that she cold easily keep[ upfated herself? A simple blog type approach did speing to mkind where basically everything just srills off the bottom... which could be simple wordpress again oif course and probably could be done through something like www.blogger.com... but that wouldn;t provide her with an introductory page, contacts page etc.

maybe I cold have a blog page masqueraded as within a wordpress site or somesuch... howsoever I did that. (html frames are SO 1999!)

didds

Doesn't everyone use Facebook these days?

Scott.

If you create the home page with a place holder pointing to an object called Page1 plus links to pages for Upcoming and Gallery, Upcoming having a link to an object called Page2, Gallery having a Page3a, Page3b, etc then you could teach her how to name appropriate items and how to FTP them to the site, automatically replacing what was there.

Am I making sense?

swill453 wrote:Doesn't everyone use Facebook these days?

Scott.

Wouldn't that have risk of copyright problems?

swill453 wrote:Doesn't everyone use Facebook these days?

No.

...and how exactly do you go about finding a significant FB message from years ago when you only vaguely remember the subject or person posting?

swill453 wrote:Doesn't everyone use Facebook these days?

Scott.

And to your question, no, not everybody uses Farcebook.

Cheers
Slarti

Slarti wrote:And to your question, no, not everybody uses Farcebook.

It was a slightly facetious answer. But I've seen plenty of arty and crafty pages hosted there.

Scott.

swill453 wrote:

Slarti wrote:And to your question, no, not everybody uses Farcebook.

It was a slightly facetious answer. But I've seen plenty of arty and crafty pages hosted there.

Scott.

But they will only ever be seen by Facebook users, won't they?
I've never seen anything on Facebook come up as the answer to a Google search, and that is something most people use

Slarti

Slarti wrote: I've never seen anything on Facebook come up as the answer to a Google search, and that is something most people use

I have. It's what's called (AIUI) a Facebook Page rather than a personal timeline. Available to Google and non-FB readers alike (albeit with a 'sign up' prompt). Here's one example...
https://www.facebook.com/RCA.London/abo ... e_internal

Sounds like she wants a blog rather than a website. Blogs require no particular computers skills at all and are usually free. I run one for an allotment site that does all we need it to do, which is to act as a cross between a newsletter and notice board. We go a free one from Wordpress.com. So you could get a site with a address like mynewwebsite.wordpress.com. It costs nothing to try it out or even to keep for several years. As you want or need more bells and whistles you can pay for bespoke designs, a "proper" website address, shopfront, etc. you can even download the entire site to a file and move it elsewhere to a "dedicated server" later when the millions are rolling in. But in the meantime, it's "new post", "type" and "publish" for free.

I know a lot of artists who use the likes of Weebly and find them very straight forward.

This for example is a Weebly site (no connection, just a random site) http://sandraorme.co.uk/index.html

Facebook and Twitter are also very popular with artists and contrary to popular opinion Facebook business pages are generally very well indexed on google and easily found. You do however need to dedicate quite a bit of time to making them work for you.

Something like

https://www.moonfruit.com/

or

blogger.com

John

uspaul666 wrote:Sounds like she wants a blog rather than a website. Blogs require no particular computers skills at all and are usually free. I run one for an allotment site that does all we need it to do, which is to act as a cross between a newsletter and notice board. We go a free one from Wordpress.com. So you could get a site with a address like mynewwebsite.wordpress.com. It costs nothing to try it out or even to keep for several years. As you want or need more bells and whistles you can pay for bespoke designs, a "proper" website address, shopfront, etc. you can even download the entire site to a file and move it elsewhere to a "dedicated server" later when the millions are rolling in. But in the meantime, it's "new post", "type" and "publish" for free.

I'd agree with this, Wordpress is remarkably easy to get going and make a decent site that is easy to post new content to. It also has plenty of modules like forums, galleries or payment carts that add functionality if you end up needing such things.

my concern about wordpress is her updating a page within it via the admin gui which I reckon will be too much for her to deal with?

didds

I can highly recommend weebly.com.

They do have a free account, so nothing to lose (other than time) in setting it up. Weebly is great for building all kinds of sites (including blogs, portfolios, etc).

Weebly is incredibly easy to use, even for IT illiterates; it's all drag-and-drop. I have been creating web sites for myself and for clients for over two decades, and I have almost completely given up on custom-builds (i.e. HTML, coding, etc). Nearly all the sites I have I created for the last couple of years are on Weebly - it's very reliable and fast (I can't comment on speed of free accounts, but I would guess that they're on the same infrastructure). I prefer Weebly over Wordpress for most requirements that I come across.

An alternative to Weebly is wix.com, which is a another major player in the site-builder market, but I have no experience with Wix, so can't offer a recommendation.

didds wrote:my concern about wordpress is her updating a page within it via the admin gui which I reckon will be too much for her to deal with?

didds

I have a blog on WordPress and editing an old article is not easy for me but usually get there in the end .
I'm sure if you were updating daily it would be intuitive to work out but when just jumping in every few months finding an "edit" button becomes a bit of a chore .

On each article (once signed in) a pop-up "edit" button appears at the bottom of the screen , seems to be as you scroll up or down the page but by the time you've moved down the page to click on it.....it's disappeared .

Wordpress sites can be updated via mobile phones these days but the real issue is security. Avoid self-managed Wordpress sites. Wordpress is notorious for exploits and it is a non trivial job keeping it up to date though you can simplify this to logging into the admin panel each day and seeing if there are updates pending. I do not recommend using any auto-update facility as if it goes wrong then you end up with a dead site without even having the knowledge that it was the update you just installed which broke it.

Perhaps look at Tumblr or Instagram, they are mostly image-oriented but may be sufficient.

Whatever she chooses has to usable via tablets and phones as that is how people do things these days.

didds wrote:my concern about wordpress is her updating a page within it via the admin gui which I reckon will be too much for her to deal with?

didds

I used to update one from the WordPress app. Surprisingly easy.

I would recommend giving it a quick go, won't take you more than 5 minutes to create a free site on WordPress.com and see for yourself.

I use the hPage website builder which is pretty easy to use. It also has website backups so in case you did a mistake, you can restore pages or previous content easily. No technical code is needed to create a website there and they have a lot of website templates so its easy to go online. The website creator they have is quite good and its super easy to add, edit, and delete web pages. The websites are mobile optimized too. I suggest you guys check them out at https://www.hpage.com.

I consider myself IT literate but I'm not a website developer. I use Wix for a local rugby club website and found it easy to understand and develop a simple website and the Blog nad gallery elements are very easy to use. It does have a free option plan, so have look and see if it's any good for you.

TonyB