Making a Website Someone Else Can Edit

TychoCelchuuu

My mom is a jewelry artist. Her website right now is not the best because I made it and I don't know anything about websites. The other downside is that any time she wants something changed, she has to ask me. She would like a new website, and although I've gotten better at copying and pasting CSS from w3school's tutorials and altering it, I'm still no web designer, and even if I were, I'd just end up making something that she would have difficulty changing.

So, basically, she needs a nice looking website, and more importantly she needs to be able to add pictures to galleries, text to various pages, and so on blah blah blah. A friend of hers recommended this thing which looks nice but it costs money, and I'm thinking there are maybe/probably free solutions that would work as well or better.

So, are there any free things that would work? It can't be Wordpress or something unless there's a way to get one of those sites to link up with your own URL.

JacksWastedLife

http://www.drupalgardens.com has a free tier and should fulfill all of those requirements except the custom domain at that level. You could set up a site and then decide if the platform is right for you before you upgrade to add a custom domain.

deveric

can't you do an etsy site, i i'd imagine you can redirect the website to the etsy page (even with a simple redirect page). I'd imagine that etsy would have tools for that as well (using your own domain), since other places do cater to that.

TychoCelchuuu

deveric wrote:

can't you do an etsy site, i i'd imagine you can redirect the website to the etsy page (even with a simple redirect page). I'd imagine that etsy would have tools for that as well (using your own domain), since other places do cater to that.

She's not a "sells things on etsy" artist, she's a "jewelry in art galleries" artist. So it has to be classy/her own branding, not something like etsy where it's you among 1000 others on someone else's storefront.

bowen

I have to give you props though, that website is still pretty decent as far as independent businesses go.

splash

Please look at using Joomla, sir. It's the right software for this job. It will cost you precisely $0. Her web host should provide an automated Joomla installation from the control panel or at least support PHP and MySQL in order to install it yourself, which consists of naming a new MySQL database and placing the Joomla install in the directory you want and then running the automated installer.

Start with a simple Joomla template that most closely matches what you would like the final site to look like and edit some of the CSS to make it more unique.

TychoCelchuuu

splash wrote:

Please look at using Joomla, sir. It's the right software for this job. It will cost you precisely $0. Her web host should provide an automated Joomla installation from the control panel or at least support PHP and MySQL in order to install it yourself, which consists of naming a new MySQL database and placing the Joomla install in the directory you want and then running the automated installer.

Start with a simple Joomla template that most closely matches what you would like the final site to look like and edit some of the CSS to make it more unique.

Joomla is what I was leaning towards; I've used it a bit before (although I've never installed it) and although the editing on her side wouldn't be the easiest in the world, I'm playing around with Drupal Gardens a bit and it's as clunky as anything, and given that it costs money Joomla seems like the winner there.

Any other alternatives I should be looking in to?

Liquid Hellz

Joomla looks like it would work nicely but Wordpress might be something else you want to look into. Its not too hard to set up and once you do its super easy to create/edit/post new pages and articles and whatever you need.

useless4

Wordpress with a few work arounds is the direction I would go as well, since the backside of Joomla is terribly more complicated.

Quick and dirty? Wordpress combined with blog editing software (such as MarsEdit on mac) and Artisteer (For making your own template) and go from there. It will cost you money on both fronts but you will be able to complete the website in minutes instead of hours.

TychoCelchuuu

I'm happy to complete the website in hours; once it's set up she just needs to be able to add pictures to the various sections (aka when she makes new jewelry) and update the listing of classes that she's teaching. The complication level for me isn't a big deal as long as I can eventually figure it out, and although I'd like it to be as easy as possible for her, I also want it to look nice. And $0 is good too.

useless4

More I think about it: Wordpress with this http://www.gabfirethemes.com/snapwire/ theme would be good for her line of business. Cost free if your host supports Wordpress already.

TychoCelchuuu

Ooh, that does look nice, and that would save me some time (her host does Joomla, WordPress, etc, so I'm fine on that front).

edit: I'm not sure this is something to complain about but WordPress and to a lesser extent Joomla seem to be really focused on blogging/adding new articles/content rather than on setting up a fairly static web page. I don't mind that from a workability perspective, because it's nice to be able to add on to the site without wrecking your design, but design-wise it doesn't really work when the home pages are set up to have constant new article additions, which isn't something an artist portfolio is really going to have unless you want to highlight new stuff.

I suppose that's just a gripe that I'll have to get over and peel away form whatever I end up choosing, but if there's some easier way to go about this it would be great to know.

harlanisgrogg

For the less programmer-inclined, Shopify is a fantastic option.
http://www.shopify.com/

Nice, Dynamic content site + full e-commerce + Credit Card processing included.

Couldn't be easier.

Good luck

p.s. they make it easy to link it to your own URL, and add unlimited pictures/galary/etc.

useless4

You can discard the "blogginess" of wordpress with a theme like that and static pages vice posts. Why not install it and play with it for a little bit before deciding?

bsjezz

yeah, wordpress is far from just a blogging engine. find the right theme (or build one from a very basic naked template), utilize the optsion, and it's a really really easy way to get good looking websites that are updatable by people who don't know code.

MichaelLC

That's not a terrible site - it gets the message across that she has jewelry to sell/display. Fonts need to be a little more consistent between pages.

Check out some scripts on DynamicDrive. They've got some good image scripts that will do slide shows, zoom-in, etc.

mrcheesypants

No one has recommended installing Drupal on her webhost and then browsing/editing the official themes page? You can probably do the same thing with wordpress although Drupal does have some nice ecommerce plugins if she ever wants to sell her jewellery online.

Tasteticle

I'd go with wordpress

It is what I use for my own webiste and they have a lot of free themes and whatnot.

I have quite a deep background in programming but I really like how easy it is to maintain.

If you have an okay understanding of CSS you can make some code edits to make it look however you want.

The whole 'blog presentation' thing is bunk as it is really editable and what you end up does not have to look anything like a blog - it is more of a tool used for creating pages, and the way those pages are presented.

apricotmuffins

Theres also Indexhibit which once its set up is easy enough to edit to add pages or text. Some basic understanding of html and CSS is needed, though I know NOTHING of web design and managed to safely alter an indexhibit template to make it my own:

http://www.mariabovor.co.uk/

TychoCelchuuu

Because I always enjoy H/A followup posts, I thought I would let everyone know that after a fair amount of work (but nowhere near as much as I might have expected), I've got a brand new website set up, and it's running off of Joomla so my mom can maintain it without bothering me anymore. Thanks for all the help, and if anyone's ever looking for something similar, I can't recommend Joomla enough. It's free and relatively easy. I still know nothing about websites and web design, yet I was able to make one, so that's pretty great in my book.