Advice please - building a club website

Hey Tom,

I use LunarPages to run a few different sites. They've got WordPress preinstalled, a decent email management system, and run about $109 - $130 a year. Support's been good so far.

I'll second Dave on Google Analytics, which is not only a fun tool to mess around with, it's free. Just went through a two-day training session on it and honestly, the stuff you can parse out of it is spectacular. I've finally been able to shut our marketing team up by using it : )

That is an achievement in itself Gator!

Cool that you were actually trained in using it. We get to fumble around in it until we find the thing that we were looking for. I found something not long ago that I had no idea existed!

Thanks Atmo, an ordinary host is what we'd be after. Definitely not in Dedicated Server territory just yet! :)

Don't worry about the social network side of it yet. If the club hasn't been too high tech, don't introduce too many new things at once and keep user setup to a minimum. That way there's a lower barrier to entry and it won't be too daunting.

To get the CMS/blog piece done something like WordPress or Joomla are good choices. There are extensions for these (like bbPress) which can provide you with built-in forums. WP will also allow you to have people register for the site so that they have accounts for bbPress.

I agree with Cait about the SocialNetwork thing -- but there is an extension for the multi-user edition of WordPress which allows a basic social network to be built. The extension is BuddyPress.

http://wordpress.org/
http://bbpress.org/
http://buddypress.org/

As for hosting, I use DreamHost. They've been pretty good and provided me the support I've needed for the past couple years.

K.

Thanks Cait, excellent suggestion not to do the social networking side yet. That was second on my list anyway, but mostly as I thought it would be the hardest to implement. You're right though - I need to get the basics right first to get the site accepted by the users before being too ambitious.

Joomla looks interesting Keith. I hadn't heard of it so I'll definitely check it out. Thanks for the other links too.

I'm using Joomla for a club site. (Can I mention it here?) It's pretty easy and flexible to setup with plenty of extensions available. We have a need for an image gallery (the site's for a photography club) and I must say I haven't been able to get any of the image galleries to work really well yet. I've tried gallery2, Phoca and Simple Image Gallery PRO.

I like the idea of using google calendar - might give that a try to help manage club event schedules - cool.

YES Cable tie please mention anything you want to - free ruthless self promotion is encouraged.

;)

Except Herne

http://kickjoey.com/
http://kdmurray.net/

(both run wordpress though, not joomla)

Even the hosts are getting in on it - maybe I should not have mentioned the self promotion thing...

@ Herne this is the Asssie Geek Podcast Forum, Dave has right a to have that in his signature.
I have used Joomla! for building websites (not hi-Tec or any thing)and have installed wordpress on my Ubuntu computer and I run a blog from there(if you can call it that).

Herne; you could have your site in your signature. Nope you would rather make out that your the dark lord himself... and I agree with SoC... thumbs UP SoC :)

<raspberry>
use your imagination
</raspberry>

Sorry off topic... putting topic firmly back onto hosting and website solutions so that Tim doesn't delete my post...

The one thing that I have heard (unsubstantiated) is that Joomla is not as secure as WordPress - basically heard someone say that it has more holes than Swiss cheese... Anyone know if that is true? Preferably an unbiased opinion.