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

[Akkana Peck]

Hi, all --

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

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.

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.

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.

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?

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

Thanks for any insights!

        ...Akkana