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

Leslie MacDougall lesmacdee at gmail.com
Mon Oct 31 12:27:38 UTC 2016


I use 3 basic galleries I most of the time.

One is very simple html/css and really is just a list set to inline. It's
good for displaying medium-sized images on a single page, or even for image
links to other galleries on separate pages. It is incredibly easy to
modify, but not quite as viewer friendly, especially if the site owner
displays a lot of large images.

The second gallery is also html/css. It is much more viewer friendly, but
requires more tech savvy to modify.

The third gallery is not html/css only. It uses javascript though, so
doesn't require a localhost to display on your computer. It's very simple,
easy to modify, good for any size images and quite user friendly.

Although I struggle to get my head with coding I manage to use php a tiny
bit and so run apache (LAMP) to see what I'll be uploading. For friends who
want to manage their own sites down the track, I stick with the html/css
however - even though it is quite a bit more clunky. Like you, I figure
that a local server would sound too intimidating for them.

I can upload some pages for you online if you like, so you can see the
code. I'm happy for anybody to use my work and share it with others.

I think your idea of teaching html and css is a really good one - it really
IS easier than a lot of people realize. If your friends are a bit older
(say around 45+) then tell them it's a lot like the original word
processors for PCs ;)

regards from Leslie


On Sat, Oct 29, 2016 at 3:06 AM, Akkana Peck <akkana at shallowsky.com> wrote:

> Thanks for all the great replies! I guess I'll probably recommend
> Wordpress to the woman who's asking now, either at Wordpress.com or
> at some other site like Dreamwidth.
>
> Like Miriam, I personally find Wordpress to be way more difficult
> than just learning HTML (and way too complicated for a lot of the
> people I know who'd like websites). For instance, Leslie wrote:
>
> > 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.
>
> I haven't found that to be the case. On the Wordpress site I
> help with, sure there's an HTML tab where you can type tags, but
> only a few tags are supported and the rest do unpredictable things.
> And there are a lot of other weirdnesses, e.g. all line breaks get
> turned into <br> so you can't include any formatting in your HTML.
> It would be a confusing way to learn HTML, and what you learned might
> not translate very well to anything outside Wordpress.
>
> I've been thinking that maybe I should try teaching HTML -- not only
> for adults who want websites, but also for a teen CoderDojo we just
> started up at the local makerspace. People think HTML must be some
> difficult technical thing, but when you actually show them things
> like <b> or <p> they say "Oh, that's not so hard."
>
> I do wish there was a decent local cross-platform HTML editor that
> lets you edit either source or WYSIWYG. There are online ones but
> then if the net goes down, you're in trouble.
>
> If I wanted to teach HTML, galleries would be a problem. My own
> image galleries use PHP that I wrote, plus some local Python scripts
> to do things like generate thumbnails and add images and their sizes
> (so I have width= and height= in image tags). It's nowhere near
> foolproof, and since it's PHP you can't test it on a local file --
> you have to have a web server. Leslie, you said you knew of image
> galleries that made it very easy to add and remove images. Can you
> recommend specific packages?
>
> There's also the theming question. If you want a consistent header,
> sidebars, footer and so forth, what's the best option? You can use
> PHP (that's what I do on my sites that need it), or SSI, or you can
> run a script after you edit each page to add the chrome. What's
> easiest for a beginner to deal with (and cross platform), or are
> they all too geeky? Theming may be the biggest argument for a CMS.
>
>         ...Akkana
>
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