Simple Site Setupt

August 25, 2004 1:38 PM

A family member of mine wants to set up a simple site for his home business - schedules of classes, some photographs, contact information, links, etc., and I have suggested that he use Typepad, which I use for a number of projects. However I think he'd prefer a non-weblog format, which leads me to my question: are there combined hosting/construction tools out there, like some of these weblog services, that have a good and very easy-to-use back-end, lots of design/format choices, but are more focused around a more heirarchically structured, top-down site structure?
posted by luriete to computers & internet (6 comments total)

I've never used it, but I think php-nuke would fit here. It's not a hosted solution, but I will plug my webhost, vizaweb, who offer one-click autoinstallation of php-nuke and about 30 other open source apps (gallery and webcalendar are two you've mentioned need for), great support, and dirt cheap rates (I'm paying $5/month).

Php-nuke, so I understand, is very mature, very stable, very well supported by user forums etc., and has a shitload of plug-in type modules written for it.

Having said all that, it's still not as easy to use as one of the blogging tools, but that may be a tradeoff you have to make. Or go the geocities/angelfire route.
posted by stupidsexyFlanders at 2:22 PM on August 25, 2004

The nukes (including PostNuke) are worth considering.

I recently did some contract development for a company called Supernerd which has a product called SuperSite which has some good in-browser page creation tools. It's geared towards small business. Pricy for personal use, though.

Finally... maybe he just needs to browse a template site, and then get Contribute or something like that.
posted by weston at 4:56 PM on August 25, 2004

You might want to look at things on the more traditional Geocities/Angelfire/etc. axis -- they've been doing simplifed 'build your site' thingies for years, and they'll do it without ads and other restrictions for not that much money.

I'd steer clear of the nukes personally, but that's just because I really don't like that three-column over-engineered layout nuke sites always end up having.
posted by reklaw at 7:56 PM on August 25, 2004

this is great stuff. i'm working with a small web company that's interested in trying to fill that verboten SMALL BUSINESS WEB DESIGN gap, and we're looking to *minimize* our post-design work. Something where the end user could very easily introduce changes to the web page that we create for them -- in a interface where they don't need to worry about any sort of markup -- is the ideal tool we need. I was thinking about trying to set up something with Blosxum (bloxsum? whichever) but I haven't really looked into it yet.

Any input/suggestions would be super appreciated.
although i do hate asking mefi users advice on something that (if it's an ideal solution) is destined to be used commercially (i suppose i won't be making any money on it really, so maybe I'm off the hook there).
posted by fishfucker at 11:08 PM on August 25, 2004

fckeditor ? and a little help from someone to create a wrapper?
posted by specialk420 at 12:10 AM on August 26, 2004

Have you looked into going the Wiki route? You can make the edit button very unobtrusive, hide the changelog, and restrict author access, which will all make it look like a real site.
posted by smackfu at 7:34 AM on August 26, 2004