need advice from website developers

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If you're going to use web hosting, I'm going to recommend http://www.hostingone.ca for your hosting needs. I have used them for 2 different sites for around 2-3 years now. It's a family run business so you don't get some call center in India for tech support, but rather guys that have access to servers and can fix your problem quickly.

Their prices are more than reasonable. The $5/month or so packages do just fine for me.

Seb... your advice is to implement a technical site for someone who has described their users as non-technical volunteers. I'm not sure that it qualifies as the best advice.

anyway...

How to have Free Google Hosting with your own domain name

Go to Google Sites.
Click on Site Settings
Click on Other Settings
Click on Web address
Click on Add a Web Address
Type your new domain name
(obviously you need to own the domain and have access to change the CNAME records)
Then click Add.

Done.


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BTW: The main limitation of Google Sites is limited layout but this is sometimes a bonus - especially if you want to make your site very accessible. If you've got videos, stick them on Youtube and then embed them on your site. There's lots you can do without any programming/scripting at all. I write lots of CSS/HTML/Javascript and various web languages for work but there's no way I'd bother using them on a site of my own. I'm trying to prove that they're no longer necessary.

I meant to use an already made PHP CMS for example one that is mentioned in the http://www.osalt.com/web-development category. By the sounds of it an already made PHPBB forum and Blog could be useful, that can also go on a good web host with PHP and MySQL support.

Anyone know which version of PHPBB this forum runs? 2 or 3?

I had a quick think about how you could add forum capabilities using an existing infrastructure as an alternative to PHPBB which would require its own hosting.

I think you could use Google Groups to create a forum - and you can apply restrictions if you need to as well.

You could then embed an RSS feed (as well as direct links to the Google Group(s)) into your web site using the RSS Feed gadget and just normal web links.

It's good to know a forum might be a possibility, but remember, we're a non-tech bunch, so it
will take awhile for us to get just the basic site set up. It could be added in later, right? The primary
thing we need to do right now is put a public face on the peace center. The peace center's board of
directors is meeting tonight and might be making a decision on if they want us to go ahead with
setting up the site. If they get all stodgy on us and say they don't want a site, I'll just take the idea
of a Google site to the Cuba Caravan group. Since it's free there's no reason why they couldn't have
their own website.

I've got you listed in my little book of tech resources. Thanks so much for your help.

(By the way, I really enjoyed your website. I'll be visiting it again!)

http://www.freewebsitetemplates.com not entirely sure about the copyrights for the templates on this website. If you/they find one that is liked, the graphics should be changed at least. With some basic code editing you/they can put in the new graphics, the content, as well as change the navigation for the website. All websites use HTML (or possibly XHTML which is pretty much the same thing) and they are likely to use CSS these days. No HTML, XHTML, or CSS codes are copy righted by the way. That means basic editing of the code for one of those templates can easily be done, without thinking about braking any copyright. A website editor could be used, but it's best to do basic code editing manually, and so I provide the link to http://www.w3schools.com again.

As for a forum of course that can be added later.

THank you Seb! More good info to have on hand.

Bea: Damn, that's a lot of work! Send me a PM, I think I can help you with that.

Thanks for the offer of help, but I think we'll be able to get it figured out. We're about ready to install the AOT program for the coalition's website, since I found out from one of the developers that the installation does not require extensive knowledge of PHP. Our volunteer tech guy didn't know PHP, but the AOT guy said it's pretty much a turn-key installation, and he'll be glad to talk our tech guy through it. Now we just need to find the time it can be done.

For the peace center website, we've decided to try the Google Sites. Some of the board expressed concern about pop-up ads, but I haven't seen any ads on Gavin's site. We want to go with the easiest and cheapest option first.

Cool. If you need any professional design of banners, logos, graphics etc just let me know.

and don't worry, google sites don't show pop ups.

Thanks, I'll write you down in my tech resource directory!