A mate of mine wants to setup a basic website. Just for a casual cricket team he and his mates play in, that I have also played the ocassional game for

He asked me how to do it, and I have no idea.

So without much basic computer knowledge at all, a small budget (excluding hosting costs) how would one go about setting up the most basic of websites?

www.baggyblack.com is an example of another mates site that did something similar, but he refuses to help as we beat them in a grudge match over summer.

We wouldn't want as much detail as that though.

Something that simple... You could use google to look up something like wordpress, get hosting with one-click wordpress installation like bluehost.com and you have a site.

so far he managed to register the domain via google, thas as far as it has gone

will follow your instructions and see how we go

What do you mean by "small budget"? It doesn't take much to get a full content management system up these days, including blog, forums, newsletters, etc.

PM me if you'd like to know more.

i'm talking as small as possible.

If it costs more than $150, he wouldn't bother!

Okay, my "doesn't take much" = a kazillion dollars then. :)

Still, around 10x that, they'd be styling.

But for $150 range, paradigm's right: go for a free option like wordpress or blogspot, etc.

wordpress appears to just be a blog?

We want a website where we can at least have a few frames etc?

too much for too little?

get bare hosting and write your own site in frontpage or equivalent?

You said you wanted it to be as basic as possible, well one page is as basic as it gets now you say you want a few frames on it, what else do you want? It might help to know exactly how you want it to look and what you want it to do.

Do you want forums? a blog? game results? news page for upcomming games? combination thereof? all of the above? What kind of hosting do you have? Have they got php/mysql abilities? mysql lite? postgress?

details man details.

Wordpress allows you to include pages with static content. You can also get plugins which accommodate e-commerce and news etc. Not just for blogs although that is its primary use.

Some other Content Management Systems to look at:
Joomla
Drupal

whoop.

he paid the bare minimum for registering the domain.

no hosting arranged.

Ideally.

Front Page with logo and info, maybe a team photo.

Then the following tabs (give or take)

History
Results
Draw / Ladder
Player Profiles
Records / Yarns

Maybe the front page is editable to put match reports in.

Is that enough detail?

Wordpress is the best option, the only tricky part for him will be doing the theming, but there are 1000 tutorials out there on that, or even better 1000's of themes out there that are 1 click installs. Your mate will then be able to just go through the wordpress admin section, add all his content and customize it how he likes it. You will need hosting though, something cheap like bluehost or *shudder* dreamhost should work fine.

Don't go Drupal/Joomla unless he is a) knowledgeable in the web, b) not knowledgeable enough to write a site from scratch *and* c) enjoys self mutilation. More trouble than its worth, especially if he's only looking at basic stuff.

Just another thought, perhaps just have a look at blogger. Might be okay for what he wants, and you can point your domain at it. And it means no hosting.

last edited by simul at 00:48:10 30/Mar/09

sheesh. use a fkn yahoo groups page or something similar. You will get more functionality than you will from writing one yourself and it wont cost you a dime.

Arachnophilia still free these days? Save notepad stuff in .RTF then drag an drop - does pix an tables an forms - how basic is basic?
If that's too hard then yeah some fkn yahoo groups page or something similar...

Use Jumba for hosting - it costs next to nothing. For a website like you're after I think it's around $20 a year or something.

When you have the domain on there they have tonnes of free stuff you can automatically one-click install from cpanel (cpanel = your hosting/domain control panel). Then you're up and running!

If you want frames you'll need to buy a website in 1995.

concrete5 ftw

here's what you should do -

1. register domain, godaddy.com (sounds like you've already done it though)
2. sign up for hosting, i like midphase.com (will cost u like $50 a year for something pretty decent)
3. point your domain to the hosting (pretty straight fwd, login to the domain control panel and update the nameservers to your hosting company. for midphase they are ns1.midphase.com and ns2.midphase.com)
4. wait approx 24hrs for the dns records to update
5. login to your webhost control panel, use fantastico (not all web hosts have this) to automatically setup wordpress or another content manager for you.
6. publish your content