Help with website building and hosting for charity!

ediesedgwick

hello all,

I am new so please bare with me...

I have been asked to look at building a website for my employer (who is a charity) and we need something cheap and easy for me to build and maintain.

Something free would be great but if there is a small charge I think we could stretch to something. I would like something with templates etc a bit like blogger.com nice and simple with text and photos being able to upload them easily.

I know you are all really friendly on here and I know someone will know where to send me too....

Thank you in advance for any help

Lizbetty

Hi! I would highly recommend www.spanglefish.com as they provide free ready built websites which are really easy to maintain with limited knowledge (we have one for my husband's business). The support you get in setting it up as you're own is second to none, and the forums are really friendly too if you are needing help. It's pretty instant!

The reason they are free is because they have small google ads on them, but we upgraded to Spanglefish Gold which is £25 pa to remove the advertising. We also pay £15 pa for Calico (who I think are as kind of sister company) for our domain name.

I really can't recommend them highly enough - we've had some design work done by them too which has been great, and the site has really helped us get word around.

I'm sure there'll be others along with some more suggestions, too, I'd give Spanglefish a go as they're very much geared up for charity/charitable sites I would think, they support a lot of charities themselves. If you have a look at their sitemap you'll see the different websites they've done, including personal and business ones.

Hope this helps and best of luck with your site!

Best wishes
Lucy

ediesedgwick

thank you so much i am going to have a look at that tonight, and if I get on ok I will let you know

ES
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richt71

Is there not a local web designer that would design a basic website for free in return for a mention on the bottom of the site - This site was designed and donated by xyz web design?
Hosting really depends on how many people visit your website. You can get free if you don't have too many visitors and have ads on your site but if your site is popular then hosting tends to cost I'm afraid. Maybe again a hosting company would donate the hosting in exchange for a mention. That would save you paying £4-£10 a month. Try 1and1.co.uk or 123-reg.co.uk of the top of my head.

Lizbetty

I hope it's useful Edie. There's a few fellow MSE-ers who have their sites with Spanglefish, one lovely lady is a harpist!

I intended to learn all about HTML and suchlike and set up my husband's site myself originally, but as well as his administrator, I'm main controller of our 2 children who are 1 and 3, so learning new skills at the moment is impossible :rolleyes: I can barely string a sentence together these days I'm so tired, lol!

Spanglefish has been great as it's so easy to use, as they do the basic site and hosting. You just cut and paste text or type it straight in, and you can upload photos easily. The topbar I found tricky but the Spanglefish design folk did that for me, there's a lovely chap on the forums too who enjoys helping people and offers to do people's topbars for free too :T

Good luck with it!
Lucy

wanye

try http://wordpress.com/ for free hosted wordpress accounts.

alternatively, something like DRUPAL would possibly be more useful, but finding a free host for drupal stuff could be difficult. i use dreamhost.com. i got the first years hosting for about 8quid (using an easily findable discount code) then its approx 60 per year for all the hosting you will ever need. may be a bit too technical for you, but youll be unlikely to want/need to upgrade to something else once youve signed up.

HTH

20000RPM

wanye wrote: »

try http://wordpress.com/ for free hosted wordpress accounts.

alternatively, something like DRUPAL would possibly be more useful, but finding a free host for drupal stuff could be difficult. i use dreamhost.com. i got the first years hosting for about 8quid (using an easily findable discount code) then its approx 60 per year for all the hosting you will ever need. may be a bit too technical for you, but youll be unlikely to want/need to upgrade to something else once youve signed up.

HTH

Of those two, I'd suggest Wordpress because IMO it's easier to administer than Drupal. You can demo both of these (for free) and many other options at this site: http://www.opensourcecms.com/.

frogbottler

If it is for a UK registered charity http://www.communitykit.co.uk/
could be another option.
"The Community Website Builder allows registered UK charities, non-profit making organisations and volunteer led groups or organisations to build and maintain their own website free of charge."

wanye

20000RPM wrote: »

Of those two, I'd suggest Wordpress because IMO it's easier to administer than Drupal. You can demo both of these (for free) and many other options at this site: http://www.opensourcecms.com/.

wordpress is definitely easier to manage. however drupal is infinitely more configurable and (IMO) a lot easier to skin so that it doesnt just look like yet another wordpress blog website.

20000RPM

wanye wrote: »

wordpress is definitely easier to manage. however drupal is infinitely more configurable and (IMO) a lot easier to skin so that it doesnt just look like yet another wordpress blog website.

That's quite interesting - theming Drupal is something I want to do in the very near future but haven't done to date. Do you know any online resources dedicated to skinning Drupal?

ediesedgwick

thanks for all your help everyone! I have gone with spanglefish and I am just going to get the domain name registered looking wonderful so far so thats me occupied for the next few nights! thanks again
ES
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