Hi all,

I'm building a website for a friend - nothing serious, but I'd like to
make it look good. I have a decent home page for him, and
contact details, which is what he wanted initially, but because of
the nature of the website, he would like to update it regularly with
pictures and text (he sells stuff from home).

Now, I want to avoid having to change this website for him, because
that'll be a pain - and I want to make him responsible for the upkeep
- how can I make it so that the main web site is untouchable, but
there is an area for ads which he can upload to himself? He needs to
be able to add pictures (of the products) and text. Nothing too fancy,
just a title, with a pic and text below.

I have a couple of ideas how to do this - but I'm sure this is a
common occurence, with some good solutions which I'm just not aware
of.

Any ideas?

Many thanks,
DSt.

DSt wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm building a website for a friend - nothing serious, but I'd like to
> make it look good. I have a decent home page for him, and
> contact details, which is what he wanted initially, but because of
> the nature of the website, he would like to update it regularly with
> pictures and text (he sells stuff from home).
>
> Now, I want to avoid having to change this website for him, because
> that'll be a pain - and I want to make him responsible for the upkeep
> - how can I make it so that the main web site is untouchable, but
> there is an area for ads which he can upload to himself? He needs to
> be able to add pictures (of the products) and text. Nothing too fancy,
> just a title, with a pic and text below.
>
> I have a couple of ideas how to do this - but I'm sure this is a
> common occurence, with some good solutions which I'm just not aware
> of.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Many thanks,
> DSt.
>

First rule to remember - it's his site, not yours. If he wants to
update the website, it's not up to you to say he can't.

With that out of the way, just put up a decent cms and show him how to
use it.

--
==================
Remove the "x" from my email address
Jerry Stuckle
JDS Computer Training Corp.
jstucklex@attglobal.net
==================

On 13 Sep, 10:42, DSt <dste...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I'm building a website for a friend

You can't afford the time to build a CMS when you can download them
ready-made so easily.

So look at setting up some sort of pre-built blog engine for them
(possibly a catalogue-based shop, if they really need it) and do
customisation work onto it, rather than building a static site from
scratch. If you take a sophisticated publishing engine and switch off
features you don't need, then you can use it as a simple CMS. The main
feature to look at is navigation - some blog engines are a bit too
focussed on date-based navigation, you need something that responds to
annotational "tags" and generates a structural nav tree too.

Otherwise, if they need an "information publishing" site, you might
even consider installing a wiki for them.

In article <1189676529.939879.152020@o80g2000hse.googlegroups .com>,
dsteel0@hotmail.com says...
> Hi all,
>
> I'm building a website for a friend - nothing serious, but I'd like to
> make it look good. I have a decent home page for him, and
> contact details, which is what he wanted initially, but because of
> the nature of the website, he would like to update it regularly with
> pictures and text (he sells stuff from home).
>
> Now, I want to avoid having to change this website for him, because
> that'll be a pain - and I want to make him responsible for the upkeep
> - how can I make it so that the main web site is untouchable, but
> there is an area for ads which he can upload to himself? He needs to
> be able to add pictures (of the products) and text. Nothing too fancy,
> just a title, with a pic and text below.
>
> I have a couple of ideas how to do this - but I'm sure this is a
> common occurence, with some good solutions which I'm just not aware
> of.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Many thanks,
> DSt.
>
>
I know you didn't ask, but speaking from experieince - never conduct
business with friends and family. You will regret it in the end.

On Sep 13, 4:42 am, DSt <dste...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I'm building a website for a friend - nothing serious, but I'd like to
> make it look good. I have a decent home page for him, and
> contact details, which is what he wanted initially, but because of
> the nature of the website, he would like to update it regularly with
> pictures and text (he sells stuff from home).
>
> Now, I want to avoid having to change this website for him, because
> that'll be a pain - and I want to make him responsible for the upkeep
> - how can I make it so that the main web site is untouchable, but
> there is an area for ads which he can upload to himself? He needs to
> be able to add pictures (of the products) and text. Nothing too fancy,
> just a title, with a pic and text below.
>
> I have a couple of ideas how to do this - but I'm sure this is a
> common occurence, with some good solutions which I'm just not aware
> of.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Many thanks,
> DSt.

How about a good joomla CMS Site? www.joomla.com

I solved a similar problem (users updating a web page) by putting
unchangable jpg and text file names in the HTML, then with a simple uploader
page, letting users upload files that would replace the old ones. I.e.,
a.jpg, b.jpg, c.jpg, etc., never changed in the HTML code. They would just
upload new a.jpg, b.jpg, etc. Likewise with text files where I provided
links with names that never changed, and they'd update new files with those
names to the linked url.

By knowing just enough to upload the files, users were able to change many
items on the page - even backgrounds, etc. They also learned rather quickly
on their own what they could and could not do if they didn't want an
atrocious looking mess.

"DSt" <dsteel0@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:1189676529.939879.152020@o80g2000hse.googlegr oups.com...
> Hi all,
>
> I'm building a website for a friend - nothing serious, but I'd like to
> make it look good. I have a decent home page for him, and
> contact details, which is what he wanted initially, but because of
> the nature of the website, he would like to update it regularly with
> pictures and text (he sells stuff from home).
>
> Now, I want to avoid having to change this website for him, because
> that'll be a pain - and I want to make him responsible for the upkeep
> - how can I make it so that the main web site is untouchable, but
> there is an area for ads which he can upload to himself? He needs to
> be able to add pictures (of the products) and text. Nothing too fancy,
> just a title, with a pic and text below.
>
> I have a couple of ideas how to do this - but I'm sure this is a
> common occurence, with some good solutions which I'm just not aware
> of.
>
> Any ideas?
>
> Many thanks,
> DSt.
>

On Sep 16, 4:38 am, "Wings" <glen...@earthlink.net> wrote:
> I solved a similar problem (users updating a web page) by putting
> unchangable jpg and text file names in the HTML, then with a simple uploader
> page, letting users upload files that would replace the old ones. I.e.,
> a.jpg, b.jpg, c.jpg, etc., never changed in the HTML code. They would just
> upload new a.jpg, b.jpg, etc. Likewise with text files where I provided
> links with names that never changed, and they'd update new files with those
> names to the linked url.
>
> By knowing just enough to upload the files, users were able to change many
> items on the page - even backgrounds, etc. They also learned rather quickly
> on their own what they could and could not do if they didn't want an
> atrocious looking mess.
>
> "DSt" <dste...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:1189676529.939879.152020@o80g2000hse.googlegr oups.com...
>
> > Hi all,
>
> > I'm building awebsitefor a friend - nothing serious, but I'd like to
> > make it look good. I have a decent home page for him, and
> > contact details, which is what he wanted initially, but because of
> > the nature of thewebsite, he would like to update it regularly with
> > pictures and text (he sells stuff from home).
>
> > Now, I want to avoid having to change thiswebsitefor him, because
> > that'll be a pain - and I want to make him responsible for the upkeep
> > - how can I make it so that the main web site is untouchable, but
> > there is an area for ads which he can upload to himself? He needs to
> > be able to add pictures (of the products) and text. Nothing too fancy,
> > just a title, with a pic and text below.
>
> > I have a couple of ideas how to do this - but I'm sure this is a
> > common occurence, with some good solutions which I'm just not aware
> > of.
>
> > Any ideas?
>
> > Many thanks,
> > DSt.

Check out:

http://selfpatience.com/rubix

Claims you can make professional websites in 5 minutes? Yeah right...
but http://weebly.com is pretty damn good...