UKC

Hi,

Need to create a small (approx 6 pages) website. Its not for commercial purposes, its just about for a young athlete to put up some info about themselves, results, pictures etc.

Can anyone recommend some software to do this with please? Any development would be on a Mac, I have no html knowledge but I am okay with IT. I'd really need something to write the code for me. I would not want to spend much money really. Certainly no more than £50.

A friend suggested Joomla which I looked at but it was far too confusing.

Cheers

Richard

In reply to Richard Greasby: NVU is probably the best bet, it's free and simple to use. You could also consider using something like Wordpress or Blogger and developing the site into more of an ongoing concern, posting more results as they happen, articles about events etc.

Either of these options would be free.

In reply to Facewest.co.uk: Sorry, I forgot the link: http://net2.com/nvu/

In reply to Richard Greasby:

I know what you mean about Joomla.

Maybe Wordpress? Although people see it as just for blogging you can create static pages with it. The blogging might be a neat way of posting your athlete's results. If you choose a theme like Atahualpa you can customise pretty much everything.

In reply to Facewest.co.uk: I've just been told by a colleague that rather than NVU you should try KompoZer: http://www.kompozer.net/ It's a more up to date version of the same software.

Have you looked at using iWeb which probably came with your mac?

In reply to Richard Greasby: MacOS has vi, I think?

In reply to Richard Greasby: There is a very easy to use program called Serif WebPlus 9.

I cant vouch for its magnificence however I've seen it working and it is worth a tenner and is simple as anything

Link

http://www.freeserifsoftware.com/store/webplus9.asp

If you need help or assistance with html and the likes, I am a student of web design my home site is http://www.raphaelbath.com I can manage the things serif cant. Swap me climbing chalk or whatever you want for the service.

In reply to Richard Greasby:

If you're on a Mac, what about iWeb, you should already have it if it's a recent model.

ALC

In reply to Richard Greasby:

This is a great bit of freeware for editing html

http://notepad-plus.sourceforge.net/uk/site.htm

Once you have a basic design set up with some css, this is all you need to edit, tweak, manage and add pages.

Plus a decent ftp file manager

In reply to Richard Greasby:

joomla's probably overkill for what you want. the suggestions for wordpress or just start a blog on blogger.com (it's a google run thing i think) might be worth looking at, set a test one up for your self first and see how it looks. the benefit of these types of things is you don't actually write any code (and therefore need ot learn how) and the updates can be done from any computer web browser rather than needing to install stuff on your machine.

warning...
having your own website can become obsessive.... I'd watch out for that

Thanks for the suggestions. I'll have a look at the sites and apps suggested. We never got any web authoring software with the iMac (iWeb?). I thought that was part of iLife which we didn't buy.

In reply to Richard Greasby:

I would have thought Facebook or a Blog would be a great way for your young athlete to communicate. Facebook doesn't need software but instead some time and effort to find out how to use it to do what you want, ditto a Blog if you select an ISP account that comes with one. The blog might be Wordpress but unless you are customising it it really doesn't matter.

There is a 'Facebook for Dummies' book that might help and there are also similar books for Blogging.

I set up a blog on Blogspot and it was free, quick and incredibly easy to do, and to customise the basic appearance of the Blog.

In reply to Richard Greasby:

The absolutely simplest way is to use a wordprocessor and simply save each page as HTML. MS Word does this. You have to manage the links yourself if you do it this way which is not such a bad thing since some application screw up very badly when trying to be so 'helpful'.

I dont think there is a Mac version of Lotus Smartsuite which is a pity because it has an application called Fastsite specially for doing what you describe.

In reply to Richard Greasby: iLife comes shipped with macs as standard so if you have the original OSX discs that came with the mac you should be able to re-install it (it's usually on disk 2 IIRC). It's very easy to use (without any idea about html required) and some of the themes actually look quite professional. Older iLife discs are on ebay for not much.
Part of the joy of iLife is that those of us who don't understand that much about pooters can coble together something professonal looking in a few minutes, and the integration from iPhoto of photos, videos etc is seamless.
I tried rapidWeaver which was good, but not so idiot-friendly so flagged it in the end.
Good luck!
Ben B

In reply to Richard Greasby:

Facebook fanpage springs to mind. You could also use Wordpress easily enough to do it. I'll do a wordpress based site for 50 quid