Barebones simple web solution

Factual Questions
1

I am looking for a simple web page that can be edited via a login without having someone to learn/deal with FTP/uploading files/ working with HTML at all.

Just needs a login to edit, a text editor interface and a button to apply it to the page.

it there any kind of template for something like this.

Reason:

One of my clients wants to be able to post a schedule on the web for her employees. She is not very computer literate beyond checking her email and typing a letter in word so whatever it is has to be simple. I have considered a blog page but I would prefer to avoid the clutter of older information since the schedule will only change for the occasional vacation/day off situation and maybe to put in a note for a meeting here and there.

2

Design the page she wants in Word, and then use the Word option to save it in HTML format. (It’ll be a messy page internally, and much bigger than it needs to be, because Word isn’t very good at this. But that probably doesn’t matter to her.)

Then she just has to upload the page to her website. That can be made very simple. I’d suggest you download SendTo FTP (freeware), install it on her machine, and set it up. Then she can just highlight the file, right-click, and choose “Send to FTP”. It will open, upload the file for her, then close. Doesn’t get much simpler than that.

This isn’t a very sophisticated solution, technically. But it will be simple & workable for her, and enough to get the job done.

3

Another option would be to install one of the various open source Wiki softwares available Comparison table. I installed and configured DokuWiki (a file system based one - most Wiki softwares use a SQL dabase backend) in two hours for a demonstration.

4

Another option would be to install one of the various open source Wiki softwares available Comparison table. I downloaded, installed and configured DokuWiki (a file system based one - most Wiki softwares use a SQL dabase backend) in two hours for a demonstration.

5

The keyword for what you’re looking for is “content management system”. These would be wikis, blogs, etc. There are a dozen free ones out there… however, where they giveth in ease of use, they taketh in terms of setup. Don’t get me wrong, they’ve made the installation pretty doggoned easy, but still someone with a bit of know-how has to FTP the package and run a couple of commands to install it, and have a bit of know-how to fix the inevitable 1 error that occurs.

Packages you might consider looking into… DokuWiki, MovableType. There are many other free ones out there. If you’re looking for someone to set this up at a very reasonable rate, email me and we’ll work something out.

Alternately, just to go blogger.com and you’re off to the races.

6

You could try Google’s Docs & Spreadsheets.

You can type a document much like you were using Word, then “publish” it. Then all you have to do is send the URL to people.

7

Or Google’s Calendar, since it’s kinda like a schedule kinda thing.

8

As tempting as your offer may be, I still think hosting a wiki of any scale is kinda cracking walnuts with a pile driver for this.

9

After a few minutes of fiddling I think we have a winner here! A spreadsheet is a perfect grid for a work schedule and its no more difficult to work with than some basic excel stuff which is within reach of their skills.

Thank you soo much. Where do I send your check. :smiley:

10

well, you say that, but:

  1. Turning easy things into trivially simple foolproof things is, in fact, cracking walnuts with a pile driver. Small effort for the user, large investment for someone else.
  2. If you give them one easy and free solution, they’ll assume all computer solutions are easy and free, and will not stop bugging you for free improvements.

Been through it way too many times… but hey, if this works for you…