[Techtalk] Helping non-techies with websites -- any experience?

[Little Girl]

Hey there,

Akkana Peck wrote:

> Do you help non-techie friends create websites? With image
> galleries?

I've helped non-techie friends create websites, but haven't helped
anyone with an image gallery.
 
> I have several non-techie artist friends who would like to set up
> websites to showcase their art, as well as other friends who want
> an easy way to maintain websites for organizations they volunteer
> for.

As for the ones who want to showcase their art, I'd like to recommend
WetCanvas [1], although it's a forum and not a website or site that
offers websites to its users. You are, however, invited to freely
share your art and even get it critiqued by the world. It's certainly
a way to get your stuff out there. Also, DeviantArt might be an
alternative, although I'm not sure if you can join that for free.

For artists and non-artists, I agree with most of everything that's
been said about WordPress, and use it to host my blog for free. It's
not the greatest, but it's free, so I can't complain. They get your
money by selling you premium themes that you then have the full
ability to customize. If you don't pay, you're limited in what you
can do to style your page, and some of the default styling will
interfere with your HTML tags and your non-HTML contents, although
you're free to insert HTML tags in your page. You can't, however,
insert an HTML style element. You have to style everything
individually by adding the style attribute to any other HTML element.
It's a pain if you have lots of little things to style, but it can be
done.

To get around the WordPress BR insertions, you have to figure
out what they get inserted into and then create a DIV or a table or
whatever, use a style attribute to style it, and then put your content
inside it to get around that. Also, I've found that some themes
interfere less than others with your content.

I created a separate WordPress blog that has nothing to do with
the main blog I have hosted there, and on that separate blog I created
one entire page of each type of content I'm likely to use (tables,
headings, code blocks, etc., etc., etc.). Then, when I go theme
shopping (once in a great, great while), I run any theme I'm
interested in past that blog first to see how things behave in it.
Many themes just don't get along with ordinary elements, and it's
better to find out on an unimportant little page than on the main
one, so they might want to consider doing that if they're likely to
shop around for themes.

	[aside]
		I've figured out 7 ways to insert code into a page on
		WordPress. If interested, let me know and I'll share.
	[/aside]

> I'm never sure what to tell them, because I'm a geek and my own
> website is HTML with a smattering of PHP, Javascript, CSS and Python
> as needed, hosted on a VPS that my husband and I admin.

That makes it tough. Any of us who are geeks have long since
forgotten what it truly was like to not be one, so it's difficult to
assist a non-geek properly. You might have to sit beside them as they
try out the various offerings so you can immediately tell what
frustrates them or is impossible for them, and then intervene.

> There are simple drag-and-drop type sites like Weebly, but what I've
> seen of those suggests that they're a hassle to maintain if it gets
> beyond a few pages, and they don't offer many options for styling.
> However, Weebly and GoDaddy do say they offer drag-and-drop image
> galleries.

I haven't tried those, but they do sound perfect for someone who
doesn't want to learn any code. The problem is always going to be
that any of them will probably still want the user to insert things
like names for things, headings and other contents, text to be
displayed when an image is hovered over, etc., so they're probably
not going to get away with hands-off entirely, at least not without
paying for it.
 
> At the other end, one friend is wondering if she should host at
> Wordpress.com, because she wants a professional looking site and
> likes all the styles they offer. I've helped a little on a site
> running on Wordpress on another server, and although I mostly stay
> away from the Wordpress admin (I mostly write backend PHP code for
> them) I do see what goes into choosing and installing plugins and
> themes, and it looks like a lot of work. Is that a lot easier when
> the site is hosted on Wordpress.com?

No idea on the plugins. The themes are relatively easy to choose on
the WordPress hosted site, although some of the free ones offer
limited customization, and that involves learning a little bit about
how to use the interface. For example, a theme might have a picture
of a country lane with some trees, and maybe you would like a picture
of books on a shelf, and the theme offers you the ability to
substitute your picture for the default one. You do have to make sure
your image is the right size, and you have to figure out how (or
whether) to use the WordPress image cropping feature when it pops up
or just dismiss it. Once the image is up, though, you can just forget
about it and it will load from then on. The same interface can be
used to edit the picture later if you want to change it or go back to
the default.

I'm pretty sure (but I can't remember) that if you define a custom
image for a theme and change themes, you have to do it again with the
new theme. If your non-techie friends need your help with that, they
might need it again later if they don't learn it on their own.

Also, while on the topic of learning to do things on WordPress, I
find that WordPress has way too many choices and a not so friendly
user interface (at least in my opinion). I've gotten lost in its
configuration at times trying to find something I knew I'd seen once
before, but couldn't remember the location of. Kind of annoying. On
the flip-side, though, they have an active forum that WordPress
members can use to communicate with each other, writing in with a
problem or issue, and then other users will help them figure it out.
This might be a plus for you so your friends aren't completely
reliant on you and will have others they can turn to.

> I'm sure I'm not the only one who gets asked about setting up
> websites. What do you tell your smart but non-techie friends?

I force them to become techie in one way or another, even if it's
just a small nibble. It's futile to resist. It's the future.

> How about your extremely technophobic friends? (I suspect these
> may be two different answers, and I'm interested in both.)

I don't have any of those. I have family members like that, though,
and I don't know what to make of them.

> Thanks for any insights!

One last thing before I go: My son suggested that WiX [3] might be a
good idea. Neither of us have tried it, but I took a quick look and
it offers free and premium sites (probably like all of the
suggestions you've gotten so far), so it might be worth trying it to
see if its interface is friendlier than any of the others.

I lied. One more thing after that. I agree with whoever it was who
wrote that the truly non-techie friends might do well to consider
availing themselves of premium services, since that way you can
literally ask for pretty much anything, and the only limit is
whatever your wallet says can happen, and then everything becomes
someone else's problem (SEP) and your friends can just make wishes,
which may be much gentler on them than putting them into a situation
that might make them frustrated or uncomfortable.

I lied again. One last thing (for real). I can't imagine being the
kind of person who isn't into code. I first discovered computers
before the internet was popular (back in the BBS days). I got a book
on HTML at the local library and was instantly mesmerized from my
very first experience with HELLO WORLD and changing the color of
things. An entire new world opened up before me and I've been on an
endless journey of code ever since and loving every moment of it
(and am currently wading neck-deep in Gforth just for the heck of it).
It must be kind of sad to not experience coding in the way I see it -
as a powerful, magical way of interacting with the world that's just
as exciting and satisfying today as it was on that day years ago, and
could never, ever become boring.

[1] http://www.wetcanvas.com/
[2] http://www.deviantart.com/
[3] http://www.wix.com/

-- 
Little Girl

There is no spoon.