Advice for building a website with an embedded blog-like feature

Question

A charity has asked me to revamp their old website. They don't have much money to spend, but want some sections to be easily updated (e.g. "latest news") with text and photos by non-technical people.

I have experience with JavaBeans, PHP, SQL, AJAX, etc, but web design is not my speciality. I am looking for any tools (javascript libraries, content management systems, template engines) and techniques that can make my life easier here.

Their current host (ukhost4u) does provide PHP and MySQL support, but I'm not sure if this is sufficient for complex CMS or framework libraries.

Any hints or links to resources much appreciated.

Answer 1

Breaking your question down a little bit, i'm able to glean that you require:

• Some advice concerning hosting
• A means of developing a site quickly

Concerning the former, there are a number of cheap VPS hosts out there who offer a really good service and pretty much full control over the server you want to manage. Slicehost and Linode being 2 good examples.

As for speedy development, you might look at building the site using a CMS or development framework. Since you can't invest much in the server owing to budget constraints, you should look at a light framework or CMS. E.g.

CMS

• Wordpress
• Expression Engine

FRAMEWORK

• CodeIgniter
• Kohana

All of which require MySQL, so make sure you do try and get a decent server in this respect.

Another solution would be Drupal used with a host like Acquia. In itself it is quite heavy but if you use a third party that take care of the hosting it would be quite convenient.

As for design, you can find a number of cheap templates that will sit nicely in the likes of Wordpress and Drupal, which will also cut down some development time.

Answer 2

I would recommend using a CMS like Drupal or Wordpress. It installs in a pinch and benefits from frequent updates, requiring much less development work.