Website toolkit for Computer impaired relatives.
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A relative of mine asked me recently for how she could easiest do a simple website for herself. She is an artist and surprisingly well known for only working on her art on the weekends and the evenings she gets off early from work. Probably because she is very good, but oftentimes that is not enaugh by a long shot to become well know and actually really sell your paintings unless you are otherwise a celebrety of some sort. Anyways, she wants to digitalize all her work and make a nice little online gallery out of them for others to see. She wants her own domain and wants to be able to easily add new pictures to it herself. She her self is not very good with computers, just above the level of incapable cargo culting idiocity most people display, but she can't ask my cousin because he is so amazingly bad with computers I am amazed everytime he manages to install a new game on his own.
She was probably expecting a simple answer of either the "oh just use this super easy website that is going to do everything for you" or "I will do that for you and programm it so you can easily update your gallery" but I have absolutely zero clue about either of that. I absolutely loathe any and all parts of any webstack. It is not limited to Javascript, I hate CSS and HTML, I hate networks, I hate web protocols and distributed systems, just all of it. If you don't want me to transform and analyse data, optimize throughput, do efficient numbercrunching or work with render pipelines, I am not interested. I theoretically know how all of this works but have no desire to engage with it.
I explained this to her in a kinder, more concise way and told her that I had absolutely nothing to do with any of that web stuff, but promised to tell her if I did come across something.
I had peripherally heard of squarespace, and when I read about them in another context yesterday I checked them out.
But because of the nature of my aversion I have nothing to compare it to, no point of reference for how good it is and before I dive into this, I thought that there was most probably someone here that has something to say about this more valuable than my ungrounded nonsense.So, for her simple usecase, is squarespace any good? What are the competitors like? Something better? Maybe something more basic, but cheap? Suggestions and experiences very welcome.
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The options for the sort of site is a normal portfoilio site:
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Wordpress + some decent web hosting and there are about a billion gallery plugins for wordpress. This will require some knowledge of wordpress (most web hosting providers have 1 click install for wordpress). However while Wordpress is pretty good on security, the plugins aren't. There are paid and free themes / plugins, and most require nothing more than logging into wordpress and uploading a zip archive in the right menu.
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Failing that Google have google sites, which is drag and drop. However generally the websites look very basic.
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There are tons of services online that have website builders, this is the UK but is advertised on the television. https://www.1and1.co.uk/website-builder.
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If she wants to sell art/prints etc there is https://www.shopify.co.uk
@SlackerD has someone look after his website, it might be worth sending him a PM.
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@Quwertzuiopp word saving as HTML. Ugly but easy
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@wharrgarbl and won't get rendered correctly, won't be SEO friendly etc.etc.
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@Quwertzuiopp said in Website toolkit for Computer impaired relatives.:
A relative of mine asked me recently for how she could easiest do a simple website for herself.
Website Builder — Create a Website in Minutes — Squarespace
Create a customizable website or online store with an all-in-one solution from Squarespace. Choose a website template and start your free trial today.
and done.
it's what i use for my websites these days because fuck dealing with different browsers and their oddities. pick a template, and start writing. done.
the fact i got a discount because i watched LTT and they had a sponsorship at the time was just a bonus.
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I used Weebly back in the day and it seemed to work okay.
Weebly is the easiest way to create a website, store or blog
Weebly’s free website builder makes it easy to build a website, blog, or online store. Find customizable designs, domains, and eCommerce tools for any type of business using our website builder.
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@coldandtired said in Website toolkit for Computer impaired relatives.:
I used Weebly back in the day and it seemed to work okay.
Weebly’s free website builder makes it easy to build a website, blog, or online store. Find customizable designs, domains, and eCommerce tools for any type of business using our website builder.
I know a guy that works there. Probably good.
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I've watched youtube videos, and so I suppose I have to suggest Squarespace
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"Start your free trial today, at Squarespace.com and enter offer code SOSMART to get 10% off your first
purchase."
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There's a lot of neo-dreamweaver tools that use premade Boostrap components so the output isn't total garbage. Here's a few:
- https://bootstrapstudio.io/
- https://jetstrap.com/
- http://www.layoutit.com/
- https://mobirise.com/ (I tried this one out, it wasn't bad, did what I needed)
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@Yamikuronue said in Website toolkit for Computer impaired relatives.:
neo-dreamweaver
@Fox hisses viciously
@Yamikuronue said in Website toolkit for Computer impaired relatives.:
the output isn't total garbage.
$5 says they will still output lines like this
<span id="4gs43" class="43gh43 479hk67"><div id="4gs47" class="a-43135aet a423f64-rea86 t53"><span id="4gs95" class="a-4235eat"><span></span><a href="index.html"><img src="logo.png" alt="a-43135aet"/><span></span></a></span><span><div></div></span></div></span>
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@Fox said in Website toolkit for Computer impaired relatives.:
<span id="4gs43" class="43gh43 479hk67"> <div id="4gs47" class="a-43135aet a423f64-rea86 t53"> <span id="4gs95" class="a-4235eat"> <span></span> <a href="index.html"> <img src="logo.png" alt="a-43135aet"/> <span></span> </a> </span> <span> <div></div> </span> </div> </span>(Formatted as a DOM tree to more fully expose the true horror lurking within.)
Where did that monstrosity come from?
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@masonwheeler said in Website toolkit for Computer impaired relatives.:
@Fox said in Website toolkit for Computer impaired relatives.:
<span id="4gs43" class="43gh43 479hk67"> <div id="4gs47" class="a-43135aet a423f64-rea86 t53"> <span id="4gs95" class="a-4235eat"> <span></span> <a href="index.html"> <img src="logo.png" alt="a-43135aet"/> <span></span> </a> </span> <span> <div></div> </span> </div> </span>(Formatted as a DOM tree to more fully expose the true horror lurking within.)
Where did that monstrosity come from?Handmade from memory as a representative sample of what my organization's official website looked like when it got dropped on my plate.
EDIT: Ah, shit, I forgot to include a
<span><span><span>[content]</span></span><span></span></span>EDIT2: That's not even the best part, though. My favorite part is that every single page had its own >1000-line .css file, and all of the numbers in the id and class names were different on each page.
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@masonwheeler I've seen worse.
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@Quwertzuiopp no idea how squarespace looks from inside, but i've tried and kind of used wix.com, and to me, it seems pretty good. It's organized more like an online wysiwyg than a "pick template, use this CMS to fill it with data", but still pretty friendly to use.
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@accalia said in Website toolkit for Computer impaired relatives.:
Website Builder — Create a Website in Minutes — Squarespace
Create a customizable website or online store with an all-in-one solution from Squarespace. Choose a website template and start your free trial today.
IIRC, CGP Grey also uses that service
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@sh_code said in Website toolkit for Computer impaired relatives.:
no idea how squarespace looks from inside
The web interface is slow to respond and grabs memory like it's playing hungry hungry hippo with your RAM.
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@RaceProUK said in Website toolkit for Computer impaired relatives.:
@accalia said in Website toolkit for Computer impaired relatives.:
Website Builder — Create a Website in Minutes — Squarespace
Create a customizable website or online store with an all-in-one solution from Squarespace. Choose a website template and start your free trial today.
IIRC, CGP Grey also uses that service
Yes. They advertise on Hello Internet and CGP Grey mentions that he uses them in his reads.
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Thanks for all the suggestions so far. I'll look into all the alternatives provided tomorrow. So far, Squarespace does look good to me, because they provide everything she would want and the UX seems good enaugh that she wouldn't need a lot of help, and if nobody here immediately tells me that there is shit lurking below the surface I am going to take that as a good sign. Normally at least someone has a quick warglblargl about how something is horrible when talking about these kinds of services.
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@Fox said in Website toolkit for Computer impaired relatives.:
EDIT: Ah, shit, I forgot to include a
<span><span><span>[content]</span></span><span></span></span>Cue the vikings: "Span! Span! Span! Span! Wonderful Span!"
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Another suggestion, starting at $3.99 CAD a month
/website-builder
