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

Leslie MacDougall lesmacdee at gmail.com
Fri Oct 28 04:52:52 UTC 2016


I guess that depends on whether they want a site to showcase their artwork
and allow for email communication via the website; or if they want to use
the site as an online shop.

Editing html and css isn't too difficult if the changes are quite small.
For example, using an inline list for images is easy and for smart artists
it should be a cinch to add new work once the original design code is in
place.

I'm a graphic artist and dabble in html & css on the side. I've done some
charity sites and also ones for small business owners who are just starting
out and only want a simple presentation site. However when it comes to the
shopping cart and checkout side, I have tried it as I understand it's a
good bit more complex - database skills required. Most people seem to pay
quite a bit for this kind of thing (30-40 aud per month for a basic setup,
according to a small business owner I advised recently).

A web developer friend advised that, with wordpress, it's possible to edit
the html/css as you like while still keeping the back-end code as is if you
have your own host and download wordpress as a freebie. (Also for the
coders, you can use the-front end as is and change the back-end to suit - I
know a few web developers who have done this successfully.)

For a good example of a small business woman who has cleverly integrated a
simple display website with both her wordpress blog and then sells through
Amazon, have a look at tphogan.com. It seems not as easy to get what you
want online, for a budget price, as it once was but I was impressed by Ms
Hogan's idea.

If any of your friends have specific questions about galleries, or anything
to do with html/css, I'm happy to help if I can and am willing to send
snippets of code for galleries if it would help anyone.

Regards Leslie

On Fri, Oct 28, 2016 at 12:37 PM, Akkana Peck <akkana at shallowsky.com> wrote:

> 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
>
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