Friendly online website builder?

February 5, 2005 9:57 AM

TechFilter : Looking for online website building software for a free webhosting community. (MI)

I am considering starting a smallish, (100 or so members) free web hosting community for local artists. In the interest of full disclosure, I would hope to make this venture self sustaining through the use of ads, so it would NOT be a non-profit entity, but on the other hand,...I don't expect to make any money either. I would like to make the site user friendly, with some sort of online website builder ( like Geocities Pagebuilder, or better still, Yahoo Sitebuilder) that would allow the members to easily self-design their site within the framework of the Geocities type model. Is there any such software around that can do this without breaking the bank? I'm willing to spend $500 or so, but open source would be nicer : ). I have seen some commercial stuff, but either the price was outrageous, or the license was too restrictive as far as how many users could access it. Any ideas folks?...comments?

posted by lobstah to computers & internet (6 comments total)

PS...sorry about the bold text...braincramp
posted by lobstah at 10:02 AM on February 5, 2005

lobstah - If you're not taking any profits from it but just covering the costs of hosting, it still is a non-profit entity. You can even pay yourself as a member of the board (take a salary), but you cannot pay dividends or other forms of profits -- you have to distribute that back into the community.
posted by SpecialK at 10:33 AM on February 5, 2005

Yes, to clarify the semi-OT point a little further: "not profitable" and "nonprofit" are totally different things. Nonprofit refers to the intent behind operating the business--advancing some collective (social|cultural|political|professional) mission rather than pursuit of financial profit for investors. But nonprofits still have an obligation to bring in a sustainable incomee and pay their bills (which can include reasonable wages for employees).

For the software, try searching Hotscripts for "geocities", "tripod", "sitebuilder", etc. The results show several free packages that claim to do that.
posted by nakedcodemonkey at 11:05 AM on February 5, 2005

Re: the non-profit issue... I guess I was clumsy in my description. I just wanted to make it clear that I was not planning to become, or dealing with, a non-profit entity. I don't expect this endeavor to bring in much revenue, but a few spare bucks wouldn't be frowned upon. So let's just say I plan to fall between "zero profit" and "get rich quick", and I expect the former to be the most likely result
posted by lobstah at 11:47 AM on February 5, 2005

nakedcodemonkey: I have tried Hotscripts, but not with those "obvious" search terms...will try that, thanks
posted by lobstah at 11:56 AM on February 5, 2005

Zope is weird, but pretty easy to do simple stuff with. And it makes the creation of accounts for a large number of people easy. You can play with it at FreeZope.
posted by gsteff at 3:28 PM on February 5, 2005