My son is transferring to a magnet school, along with about twenty of his classmates. Along with the transfer, there is a lot of information coming to the parents, and some of the parents have already missed some of the events.
I’d like to find some sort of (preferably free) hosting that will allow us to keep track of the events. I think that we will need a calendar and email distribution. A message board function would be nice as well (A board with forums would be really helpful in that there could be a separate forum for each home school, along with separate ones for each school department, etc…)
Any suggestions?
The two big content managment sytems are e101 and Drupal. They are fairly staright forward to setup and are free
Mybb is a free message board, that is probably one step below vBulletin (this board), but it’s free
If you are doing your own research on this, you may run across Ning.
They specialize in build-your-own social network sites, with message boards, blogs, and (I think) calendar functionality.
However, before you build anything with Ning, be aware that they won’t be offering free services much longer.
It is a nice service though. You may want to check them out when they announce their new pricing structure early next month.
Have you considered just using Groups on Facebook?
I don’t know how prevalent Facebook accounts are for parents of school-aged kids. But, it’s free and easy, and requires very little setup.
I’d say Facebook accounts are very prevalent, most parents are probably already signed up for it. I think it would do a good job.
Well… My suggestion, although not what you asked for, is to consider not going free.
Wait, hear me out…
Since this is a school, anything should probably be at least partially handled by the school. If you go and set up everything, maintain the system (and they do take maintenance), set up the admin accounts and user accounts, what happens when your kid(s) are out? Will you personally keep that up? Also, naming the site can be a blast, and maintaining the registration if you care to.
I’d at least strongly consider going with a decent hosting service, that supports the current popular web technologies, perhaps with ‘quick start’ type control panels. I currently spend about $100/yr for a host, and have 3 separate domain names currently. The primary site is running a phpBB system (free), and a decent CMS system, as well as a Ventrilo server. It supports 3 or 4 different back-end databases, as well as a bunch of other things that I’m not using. Aye, sounds scary, trying to load software, and hook-up the databases, but really, it’s not all that bad. Also, you can have a domain name that makes sense (www.MySchool.org) or whatever.
Just another though.
I think running a site would be a lot of work, and you won’t keep up with it because other more important things will take precedence. And if it’s a special site the parents would need to constantly visit to stay updated. I still say that Facebook is going to be part of most parents life already, just use that.
If not Facebook at least try a mailing list, then anyone with an e-mail account will get informed.
I’d probably go with a Google Group (can be used either as a message board or a mailing list, depending).