[Cialug] Your suggestions about Non-profit website
Claus
cniesen at gmx.net
Thu Dec 21 15:55:01 CST 2006
I'm involved with a non-profit organization that needs to define their
website solution. We just recently moved it to Google but I already hit
some horrible limitations there.
eg: - robots.txt disallows indexing
- pages are labeled by the page title, which is the same for
all our pages. So finding a page to edit is difficult.
- common elements such as the banners need to be added manually
on all pages.
- some very weird quirks that one has to work around.
You can visit the page at http://www.volunteerstorycounty.org to get an
idea of the current site. The main issue is that like many other
non-profits, we don't have a big budget. We only have one full time
employee that is assisted by volunteer office workers. So the turnover
of people maintaining the content of the site is somewhat high.
Therefore letting people just create HTML isn't the best idea, since the
next person may not use the same web editor or not even know much about
HTML.
Currently I have two ideas running through my head. One is to create a
static website which has a few custom php elements, one for uploading
one or two current events/news blurbs and another one for uploading
newsletters. It would be much like what I did for my home page:
http://bessie.niesens.com/behind-the-scenes/niesens-behind-the-scenes.html
The other option is to go with an open source content management system.
This would (hopefully) allow a laymen to change any page of the site.
I did try a couple a few month ago but found that configuring them is
quite involved and I wonder if we get more pain than value with such a
system.
Of course there is the option of finding a host that provides some kind
of content/website management. Hopefully it would be better than
Google. This of course would also cover the need of finding a web host.
There is always the option that I would host it over a DLS connection
but I'm not sure if that's the best for the organization strategically.
I'm sure quite a few of you have some good insight, recommendations and
advise. I'm eager to hear them.
Claus
PS: Yes, donations of professional web hosting or development are
welcome as well. ;)
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