[Cialug] Your suggestions about Non-profit website

[Josh More]

I strongly recommend joomla.  It is ideally suited for one
technically-adept admin and numerous content creators/editors that
rotate through an organization.  While my company does hosting for this,
I doubt that I could get hosting donated, so check out
http://www.siteground.com/joomla-hosting.htm

They're well rated, though I have no personal experience with them.



-- 
-Josh More, RHCE, CISSP, NCLP 
 morej at alliancetechnologies.net 
 515-245-7701
>>> Claus <cniesen at gmx.net> 12/21/06 3:55 PM >>>
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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