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How to Set Up a Gift Website?
falzbro writes "I'm considering giving my parents their very own website for the holidays. However, it's harder than anticipated to find any type of Content Management System whose intended audience is a computer illiterate family. I personally use Drupal for content and Gallery for photo albums, and frankly can't stand PHPNuke. The only features required would be a blog of sorts and a photo album. I can't be the first one in this predicament, can I?"
I can think of nothing my mother would like more sort of me moving back home with the grandkids so she can have them everyday, in fact she'd prolly just have me ship the kids to her and the wife and I stay away....
If the web site lets her see new pictures and print them, she'd giggle for weeks. The idea is fairly good I wonder if I could host somthing simple enough to allow the rest of the family to upload images, we've had lots of grandkids in the last 18 months. My grandmother can't use the VCR still but she can pop the memory stick from her camera into the printer we got her and her house is flooded with pictures or wee little ones doing cutsie things that only family members would appreciate or care to know about. The scary thought is getting busted for child porn for the shot of little jenny having her first bath or somthing like that...
errr....umm...*whooosh* *whoosh* Is this thing on ?
It's a fun and interesting project to come up with a blog-like set of scripts. There's a lot out there that do way more than you care for it to do, and there's always the satisfaction of having created one yourself.
A few caveats, I suppose -- make sure you're up on security when it comes to scripting. The last thing you need is for a gift site to be defaced because you messed up on a SQL-injection vuln.
Then there's the "idiot-proofing" portion where you have to come up with a coherent enough UI for the computer-unsavvy folks to work with on the backend. I decided I'd write my own and since it's for myself, I could get away with a not-so-friendly interface as long as the outside world could navigate through what they need to.
I'm all for a DIY project -- you get to have a bit of fun (though some of it is tedious in debugging and fixing aesthetics) but it could present not only a gift for your family but also a bit of a mental gift for yourself having gone through it.
If they have a windows PC check out NeoPhoto; http://www.neophoto.com. Makes webpages quick. Very easy for novice users.
So... my g/f Amy, not at all a techie, secretly learned how to set up and use Andromeda, emailed my friends for suggested listening, and surprised me on my birthday with a fully set up music site. It was totally amazing!
She even set up a fake Hotmail address so she could write me with tech support questions. Sneaky.
Here's what I do: Bitty Browser & Andromeda
If you do want your own domain, how about a Wiki? It doesn't get much easier than a link called "Edit This Page". There are a few varieties to choose from; one with authentication and file attachment capabilities would work for a simple blog/photo gallery site. That way your family can have total control over every aspect of the website, but it can still be incredibly easy to modify.
main(c,r){for(r=32;r;) printf(++c>31?c=!r--,"\n":c<r?" ":~c&r?" `":" #");}
I've been investigating Mambo - it's opensource, content can be managed without programming knowledge, and all sorts of modules, such as threaded forums, blogs, etc are available (not sure about photo albums though). Same sort of backend as others that have been discussed, PHP/mySQL/apache.
I've had a tour of the administration site for my friend's mambo install, and it sure does look sweet...
Pixie
don't mess with those geekgrrls
I'm going to "third" this suggestion!
.Mac. You get iTunes and the Apple music store (start them out right, instead of trying to pirate music of questionable quality off Kaaza, Morpheus, etc.). And lastly, you get (at least in many major cities) a nice clean, store you can walk into and get a respectable amount of customer service and assistance. (Before you flame me on this one, I'm well aware of some of the horror stories. But *in general*, you're talking about a place that offers regular free training on their popular products, a "genius bar" that's there just so you can ask questions/get help, and more. Beats calling some 800# and waiting on hold for 40 mins.)
I just got home from a LONG day of doing on-site PC service, and the last 3 calls I've struggled with were the same old story. Clueless family orders high-speed Internet access and plugs cable/DSL modem straight into the back of the computer. A month or two later, system has slowed to a crawl and loses connection constantly. Web pages often produce "DNS error" messages. Pop up ads are out of control.
Say what you will about the Mac, but none of this crap happens in the "Mac world". Not only that, but you get photo software that actually downloads images off their digital camera with zero pain and hassle (just plug the thing in and away it goes). You get easy web site creation via
I dunno - I work in IT, use a Mac (home and work) and am not, by any stretch of the imagination, particularly artistic! Neither for that matter are friends of mine who work in network ops for a big IT multinational, and choose Mac for their own machines.
(I only 'switched' from Windows about 18 months ago, and at first found some things on the Mac annoying; now I find the lack of consistency on Windows far more infuriating.)
Mambo isn't bad. It's certainly pretty simple to use. opensourceCMS has an example of it.