Background:
I run a social club for local geeks. We currently have about 200 members and we have events about 3-4 times a month.
About 6 months ago, I bought our domain name through GoDaddy and set up a website using their website tools, which are unwieldy at best. But they were convenient at the time.
However, I know there are open source systems out there and I’m trying to figure out the best one for me. I did some searching through older threads and found out about Dupral, Wordpress, and Joomla.
But I’m such a noob, I’m still not sure of the best thing for me. So would you indulge me while I share my wishlist of things for my website, and point me in the right direction if you can? I will put a dedication to you on the front page of the website!
Wishlist:
[ul]
[li]Standard Static Pages (i.e., “About Us”)[/li][li]Blog feed (with maybe a way for it to automatically update our livejournal & facebook blogs as well)[/li][li]Photo albums (from events)[/li][li]Twitter feed (to show tweets currently coming through)[/li][li]Events Calendar (we currently use Meetup - if we could even just show a Meetup feed, that would rock)[/li][li] Youtube feature for some of our favorite videos[/li][li]Online Shop[/li][/ul]
I used Frontpage back in the day, and I can stumble my way through basic html code (I actually learn pretty quickly).
I just want a cool page for our site, but one that would be easy to update content to later. My biggest fear is that a lot of the CMS systems I’m seeing don’t seem to be very graphic friendly. But I’m a noob - what do I know?
DocuWiki is a pretty easy wiki to setup and run. Mediawiki which is used by the Wikipedia is not at all user friendly though you can figure it out if you sit down with it for a few days.
If you have any interest in learning HTML (XHTML) check out Dynamic Drive there is a lot of good info, their forums are helpful and they have CSS templates which are great.
Go with Wordpress. Its much much simpler than the big frameworks like Drupal or Joomla. You can probably find plugins for most of what youre planning. Everything else you can with static html. As long as you keep everything simple and dont get too ambitious at first you should be okay.
Dunno about Drupal, Wordpress seems to be OK, though the templating system isn’t easy if you want a really special “custom” look*. Stay away from Joomla! though. It’s a bunch of crap.
CSS styling should work with WP, but there’s always a lot of HTML hackery to do unless you’ve already got a “theme” that has the basic layout you want.
I have worked extensively with all 3 of those. All have the capabilities you want.
In your situation, I suggest you will have the most success with wordpress because of its universal support and noob-friendly community, tons of templates already available, and easily installed and configured plugins to handle everything you list and much more you will want soon.
At a price you can handle. Free. You could start with the default template, add all the functionality, then play with more template that might be more visually appealing. You don’t need to be expert in anything - you would be surprised how many websites you visit that are running wordpress without saying so.
I am curious though - what kind of club that size for “geeks” does not have anyone with any familiarity with any of these softwares?
We are mostly sci fi geeks. I’m sure there are several members in our group that are more than capable to handle this. However, since the group is just a year old and I’m still a little bit protective of it (think mother hen) I wanted to keep it in house until I really feel comfortable turning the reins over to a more qualified (but as of yet unknown) geek.
And I am certainly geeky, but html/website work is not my forte.
I am going to chime in with another vote for WordPress (yeah, they really want the capital letters there, trademark/IP stuff). I set up my own (very neglected) blog using it, then got volunteered to set up the website of the local Red Cross chapter, so I used it for that as a CMS rather than a blog. I have a static start page, with various other static pages full of information, and use the posts for putting up stories about activities the chapter has been engaging in.
There are tons of themes available for free, and the plugins make it very easy to add to the basic functionality. If you are familiar with CSS, you can tweak the themes, or there are even plugins that will let you customize your theme without needing to get into the guts of the html. Very handy if you are not sure how to handle that.
One of the downsides to it is the sometimes slow support for the plugins. I have an event calendar of the Red Cross site, that I chose because the author was upgrading it to do some things I wanted. It has been a year and the upgrade has not happened. And some plugins just get abandoned, although since they are open source, it is not unusual for someone else to start improving them if it is a popular plugin.
Check out Talkspot.com … I should disclose that it is my company, so obviously I’m biased.
That said…
We meet all of your criteria, including being free … with the exception of tweets, and calendars, both of which can be added, but you’ll need to be a little creative (we give you access to the html, and you’ll have to embed them yourself).
And some plugins just get abandoned, although since they are open source, it is not unusual for someone else to start improving them if it is a popular plugin.