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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?"
The colon in http:// is missing.
;).
We can handle a slashdotting
you won't have the vanity of familysmith.com, but if your parents have a macintosh, iPhoto does makes web photo journals nice and easy.
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
Man, you must really hate your parents to give them such a crappy gift. Why?
Get them an iMac with a .Mac account. It handles all your needs :)
If you want to give them blog functionality, I'm a big fan of moveable type : http://www.moveabletype.org
I know lots of tech challanged people who use it for their sites.
Why not make your own? that way it's exactly how you want it, and it means more as a gift.
If you really want it to be a gift, customize it yourself. Just find a good php script that does each of the things you require, then customize and combine them. Then you can create your own administration interface, or combine the admin interfaces of the individual scripts if possible. I've never found a CMS I liked, as they all seem to try to do too much, and it becomes a pain to customize them due to their massive codebase. And you're wise to stay away from PHPNuke.
Everyone is entitled to their own opinion. It's just that yours is stupid.
I know the author has had serious problems with PHPNuke but the PostNuke project branched away from PHPNuke a while back. There are plugins for it to incorporate the Coppermine Gallery amongst others and is very easy to maintain and customise.
http://www.postnuke.com
The MyTh - I am a figment of the Imagination - [Im Probably even not here]
Try Plone. It's easy to install, works right out of the box, and has available blog and photoalbum modules that are easy to install and configure.
-- Stu
/. ID under 2,000. I feel old now.
Buying someone a service (or a pet) as a gift is, well, stupid is the most positive thing I can think of. Don't buy people things that need money fed into them forever.
Zope is a very powerful, yet friendly content management system. If you ever get beyond the basics of a bunch of text and images, it allows Python scripts. Zope is written using Python. Everything I've seen about it seems pretty nice, and I haven't heard a bad word against it.
Refuse to make a statement in your sig!
Macromedia Contribute is right up your alley. $99 last time I checked. And very idiot proof.
Check it out
Fantasy remains a human right; we make in our measure and in our derivative mode... -- JRR Tolkien
Will they actually use/update it?
Too many websites go into the bit-bucket simply because it's no longer "fun" or becomes too much work to manage. If your parents are really interested in having their own site, go for it! I'd recommend getting them a free website to start then move them to a larger setup when the time comes.
Don't forget to wrap it in continuous feed printer paper and use a ribbon cable for the bow!
If "disco" means "I learn" in Latin, does "discothèque" mean "I learn technology"?
Seriously. iMac, .Mac, iBlog. Done.
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
Then make up a URL and tell them it's their new home page.
(and that if they want to change it that they'll have to wait till next X-mas.)
Is this truly the only Earth I can live on?
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 ?
horde.org
Gotta use the CVS code for photo album, etc. but it's pretty stable.
I use WebGUI from PlainBlack Software. It uses Perl/MySQL/Apache.
It is OpenSource, and very easy to use. It has WYSIWYG for those that don't know how to cut/paste. I suggest anyone looking at a CMS to take a look. It isn't perfect, but none really are.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
For my web site, I found that the easiest content management system is Pivot. A friend has also set up a site where his parents can post directly to his web site... It's "grandma proof" (once set up) and easy to maintain..
http://www.opensourcecms.com/
Sincerely,
Amazon.com Legal Department
Moveable Type is an excellent solution. Very user friendly with excellent online documentation. It's also easy to set up! I'd totally recommend it, I too have set it up for a few folks that aren't all that computer savvy, and they've had no problem using it to blog. There's also their pay service Typepad that is even more newbie friendly and requires no setup at all! Either of these solutions will do what you need.
Have you considered just getting them socks or chocolate?
If your parents are as computer-unsavvy as you claim, they will not use this. Maybe, with your help, a couple family photos and a minimal blurb of self-awareness "Hey, this is our website and it works!"
After that, it will be as static as if it were etched in a stone tablet. Any updates will be done by you when you're visiting, you'll show them how to update the site, they'll nod and smile, and then it will be etched in stone again until you come back.
Just go ahead and buy them a new clock or a DVD player or a warm blanket. Better than saddling them with something that will be perceived as a responsibility and continual drudgery.
...
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.
Jeez, what is PHPnuke doing mentioned in this post? /. concept.
Phpnuke is "a news automated system specially designed to be used in Intranets and Internet. The Administrator has total control of his web site, registered users, and he will have in the hand a powerful assembly of tools to maintain an active and 100% interactive web site using databases."
So it isn't a wiki, it isn't a CMS, and it certainly isn't a blog. It's an open source project loosely based on the
Bashing PHPnuke in this post sounds too stupid to be true, it's like bashing MySQL for not being a good word processor.
--> Insert Funny Sig Here
If they have a windows PC check out NeoPhoto; http://www.neophoto.com. Makes webpages quick. Very easy for novice users.
Nice gift. Leave it to a slashbot to find a gift that makes some skank-ass tie look good.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
I gave my wife a domain name + website as a gift some years ago (http://www.trickenzie.com/). She wasn't my wife then, we were just seeing each other.
When I told her about her new email addresses (as many as she wants!) and website she just looked at me and said "You bought me a domain name?"
"Yeah."
This was followed by that utter dead silence men know only so well - it was a pivitol moment...
Then she smiled and nodded. Now she wouldn't live without it.
A geek love story, presented to you by the letters C and O and M.
Alas gallinaceas de urbe bovis volo
Almost any functionality of any form requires learning to some degree. A radio-controlled car, a new stereo, a new cell phone. To expect something like this to require no learning curve at all is unrealistic. Also, most people take some interest in learning things (although I know I'm speaking for people I've never met here). With that in mind, could you not use TikiWiki and tune it a bit to strip off the goodies they won't use.
Another thing you can do to minimize the learning curve is document the features they'll be using, on their own site. That way they don't have to know anything but the url...they can see help on the front page, and utilize it.
For your security, this post has been encrypted with ROT-13, twice.
You can see my review of CMSs as a presentation (PDF) here.
Unfortunately just about all open source CMSs leave a lot to be desired in terms of out-of-the-box architecture and usability.
I agree, giving someone a one size fit all content management program with the idea that it will make their online experience a wonderland is absurd. I will just lead to a lot of work and unhappiness.
Personally, I think people are better off playing with a variety of programs. For example, you might try an online gallery with Yahoo, oFoto or those types of programs. Geocities pages are easy to maintain. There's tons of multiuser genealogy sites. If a person wants a simple home page for articles, I would just stick with one of the big blog companies.
The diversity approach gives people a chance to learn what they like and don't like. Online happiness comes from playing with different things. Instead of getting something large in scope, I would look to smaller things.
For example, there is a new railroad tycoon program out, I was thinking of getting that for the paternal unit. I wrote a PHP program so the maternal unit could publish her philosophical thoughts. Even an extremely limited scope web page for parents takes a great deal of work.
You should take a look at Fog Creek's CityDesk. Their "starter edition" is free and lets you publish sites of up to 50 pages.
CityDesk
I have been using the Homebase Anywhere service from Axentra Corporation. They provide IMAP and webmail, 100 megs of web and storage space and your own portal page with webdav access. Photo albums are automatically generated by uploading photos and description files to your "Photos" directory. Other features include compatibility with Mozilla calendar, an LDAP capable address book, and an online web page generator. There is a free 60 day trial. Axentra also sells the Rumba Multifunction Server Appliance, which is a mini-ITX and Linux based internet gateway server which has all of the features of Homebase Anywhere.
Also the .mac site also has other things like update software, sample tunes for your imovies and lots of stuff thats not just a collection of freebies but focused on assisting your mac in ways that are actually productive.
No they dont have cgi, but you dont want that for your case anyhow.
Dont say, well .mac is out of the question cause I dont have a mac or a free .mac site. for illiterates macs a re cheap compared to the training you would have to give these people to be as productive on any other computer. THROW the WIINDOWS machine on the trash and buy a used mac for them on e-bay--it's way cost effective.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
...can be used without paying Apple for .mac. Some of us like a little more control over our domains.
Joel on Software's company, FogCreek, makes a very friendly, easy to use content mgmt software package, named CityDesk.
Very intuitive and easy to use...yet it is pretty powerful. Good for novice and knowledgeable 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
I find it interesting that no one has suggested Blogger. While other tools are more powerful, for something simple, Blogger seems like the best idea. It is free, they can host it for you if you want, and it's even integrated into the Google toolbar. Nothing seems easier than just telling them to hit the toolbar and type in the window.
"Information wants to be expensive" - Stewart Brand, the same guy who said "Information wants to be free"
Well, not "all the perdy choices". OpenSourceCMS only shows PHP related apps, but it is an excellent site. You get admin access to all the cms apps they've installed. Do almost anything you want! It's just what I needed last week, while figuring out how to build a custom PHP-based CMS for a client. It's great to be able to try the other solutions first.
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 have started using mambo and have found it the easiest installation yet. Upload it, go to your site and the installation routine does all the database for you in just a few screens. You need PHP and MySQL. It is geared for online news/blog/personal site but is scalable for commercial. Once you get the feel for adding articles and such, its a breeze and much more friendly than postnuke and moveable type. Plus, the template system is a cinch (just some include lines for the modules and components). Here is their link.
http://www.mamboserver.com
And my site I set up to keep my family up to date and for some personal musings.
http://www.snappermorgan.com
It is not really a blogger, but it lets your folks write articles with pictures in them, and publish them hitting one button. Unlike most CMS this one is a program in Windows, and archives all files locally. When you hit "Publish" it generates tables of contentes, indexes, etc. and uploads what changed through FTP.
http://www.fogcreek.com/CityDesk/index.html
The starter version, which lets one publish up to 50 articles, is free. Do take a look at it for a nice and easy CMS. Also, for your templates, don't forget to check Open Source Web Desgins -- http://www.oswd.org/ )
Quem a paca cara compra, paca cara pagará.
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
Have you considered that giving computer illiterate people their own website may have unpleasant side effects?
For some reason people forget about the simplest security measures, such as publishing their mailing address on one page, and the pictures and names of all their children on another.
After all, only the family is going to see it, right?
If you're going to set them up with a site, sit them down and give them a good lesson on what they should and shouldn't post.
I was stuck with this same question, a lot of our clients, art gallerys, adult entertainment, etc. all needed self-publishing (basically so they'd leave us, their site designers, alone), I didn't find anything that fit the layout of their sites (I didn't want to change the overall look) so I started writing something that was somewhat flexible in terms of layout.
... really. Nearly done. So that's the only problem with DIY, you have to be fast, or really dedicated. IMHO A content management system is not THAT easy...
All I knew, well, was asp so it's written for IIS, and uses some PHP for file uploads and Graphicsmagic (spawn of ImageMagick) for image manipulation. It works directly with the file system and text files, no database.
If I had to do it over I might say use MySQL but I wanted to make it work pretty much anywhere, and I knew the file system object so... Anyway I started about 9 months ago and it should be finished any day now
closed minded is as closed minded does
thanks for putting this post up.
My mum wants me to create a photo gallery for my dads 60th birthday.
Its a gallery from when they where 21 and travelled by combi van overland from Singapore, through Iran and Iraq to Turkey and then through Europe to England.
I'm going to give your suggested Gallery a look at.
Can I ask a question? What is a good host? One that has decent MB allowance, supports the required PHP and not to many ads?
I'm more or less a linux newbie, but I found Gallery to be really easy to set up and host from my home box over my cable connection (with a bit of port forwarding... damn you port-blocking ISP bastards!). If you want to use a commercial host, the requirements for Gallery are pretty minimal. The only non-standard thing required is the netPBM image libraries. It uses a pretty slick mechanism to store serialzed data in text files, so no DB required.
webeasel.net is one example of a content system so easy your grandma can use it. Its a locally produced new product from an up-and-coming tech company in town (Urbana, IL). I don't work there but know people who do.
I should know, I did exactly what you are proposing for my mother last mother's day. She wanted a website where she could share her quilting and craft projects with family and friends...
So I setup QuiltZilla for her. I took me five minutes to get it up and running, and it only took her 10 days and a digital camera to get the first 200 pages of content in the system.
But don't take my word for it, check it out for yourself.
Kwiki is a simple wiki based content management system, that even my mother can use, and it only takes minutes to set up.
Man, and here I was all proud of making my folks a clay ashtray.
"Yeah, well, Dracula called and he's coming over tonight for you and I said okay."
Try phpWebSite http://phpwebsite.appstate.edu/, I haven't used it myself, but it seems good and people have given me positive reviews.
Thomas
http://www.mac.com/1/mac_faq.html
If your family are using Linux, you're SoL, but from the context of the question (need an idiot-proof solution), I suspect this is not the case.
The only thing you can accurately describe as "Scotch" is a sticky tape made by 3M. And it's
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.)
People always say "get them what you want, what you'd like to get, and you're home safe"...
...which is a load of CRAP! My family has been following that logic for years, and all I get is tasteless crap that they'd love to get for themselves, but I hate and wouldn't ordinarily touch with a ten foot pole.
Consequently: don't get your parents what you'd like to get yourself, or what you think they should have. Get them something they actually want. My guess is that a website/blog is NOT on the top of your their whish list.
P.S.: For those of you who whish to buy ME a gift, you (almost) can't go wrong with Thinkgeek D.S.
SIG: TAKE OFF EVERY 'CAPTAIN'!!
Shoot with cannons on pidgeons but if you'd like to have a look at full-blown CMSs give the OpenSource Typo3 a look - after looking through all these phpNuke* siblings which (usually) lack a reasonable user management or real user-definded templates I found typo3 to be scalable, user-friendly and loaded with tons of "extensions" (they call it) for e.g. implementing awstats and such. The learning curve is quite steep but worth dealing with...
-nerbas.
Mambo isn't bad. It's certainly pretty simple to use. opensourceCMS has an example of it.
I come from a huge extended family and one of my cousins set up a site on MyFamily.com. It's not perfect and you won't have a lot of control, but it has a ton of features and is pretty easy to use.
OddManIn: A Game of guns and game theory.