[inishindie]

Hi

Can anyone help point me in the right direction?

A friend if mine is doing some great charity work in Ghana.

She is single handedly running an animal welfare centre in County Mayo Ireland, working full time in the health service looking after people with learning difficulties and still finding time to raise much needed money for an African village. Here she is feeding and educating orphan children as well as providing money to make clean water available and spearhead horticultural projects.

All of the money raised goes to the cause too!

Recently she had to go to hospital to get her fractured leg fixed. She came out with a plaster cast and an ambulance!! This is being shipped over along with truck loads of medical supplies and goods.

One problem she has is storage (she only has a small cottage) but she has to sort that out locally, if anoyone has storage space for non perishables in th eWestport area please contact me!.

The other issue is promotion: I have offered to help to set up a website (I did a blog site so I thought it would be easy!) I am really confused though. Web hosting,servers HTML codes and all of that!

Does anyone have any ideas where I could find easy to use web site tools? and a simple to use site?

I would be OK with paying as I want to get it looking good.

Any ideas?

there is a bit of information on http://inishindie.blogspot.com/search?q=noeline

I have more photos and information ready to go

Thanks

Ian

http://inishindie.blogspot.com/

[buzzybee]

My son works in computers and I will ask him for you, I will get back to you on this, Inishindie

[inishindie]

Thanks buzzy bee

Someone suggested Loomla!

I have put a link on so your son might be able to see if it's any good.

Any suggestions at all will be very welcome

Thanks

http://www.joomla.org/

[buzzybee]

inishindie, unfortunately my son lives in Exeter, Devon, but I have e-mailed him and asked him to check out this web site for you, will get back to you as soon as I can.

[frank]

Hi inishindie, what an amazing lady Noeline is! I'm very touched by her story.

I've run numerous websites and still do so I can advise you as best I can. I can also help out with a link or two when a website is up and running.

Depending on whether you want to go down the free route or pay a small bit of money to pay for web hosting and a domain you have the following possible options:

Note: if you want to project an air of credibility it would be best to go down the paid route. This is just a rule of thumb however and may not bother most people.

Free: Google have an online service called Google Page Creator that allows you to easily create a webpage via a drag and drop interface, no technical knowledge required. I've tinkered around with it for a short period and it works well. The domain the site would be hosted at would be something like 'yoursite.googlepages.com'

Paid: First up you'll need a domain. I use GoDaddy.com for my domain needs and they provide a great and cheap service. You can get a domain for a year for under $10.
Next up you will need a web hosting service. I use eApps.com and I can't praise them highly enough. You can get hosted from $10 a month (cheaper if you pay for a few months at a time). Their support is second to none and their uptime is fantastic. I've heard many many horror stories about other web hosting services so this recommendation will spare you future headaches

With the paid option you will still need to create the HTML pages however. I'm not familiar with content management systems like Joomla but I have heard good things about that product so it could be for you. There are these webmaster forums where you could ask questions:
- http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/forumdisplay.php?f=23
- http://www.irishwebmasterforum.com/
If you don't find any answers there you can also PM me here if you want.

Hope this helps. Thanks for helping your friend Noeline with her great work!

[inishindie]

Thanks Frank


The information you gave me is great! Thanks for writing back

Noeline is a fabulous woman. I don't know where she gets the energy from!

I was (and still am a bit) confused though about how to go about things. I did set up a website a few months ago . It was free and I just got a template to fill in. It did seem like a good idea but when you go onto it you have to put up with horrible adverts that the company throw at you. I lost interest with it ( www.gardendesignireland.com )

Correct me if I am wrong but what I need to set Noelines site up is:

1. A domain- is this the name of the site? (go daddy)

2 web hosting- is this where you can build the site and put it on the web?(eApps.com)

Then do I need a facility to create the pages?

I am willing to pay because I want to get it right first time.

Sorry for sounding a bit dim but I don't want to set something up like mine then find it's limitations

Cheers

Ian

[frank]

No problem Ian, I wish I had someone to help me when I started off too

1. Domain - gardendesignireland.com is a domain name. How did you set up this one initially, was it though the free site? GoDaddy is a domain registrar where you can purchase domains.

1. Web Hosting - Yes this is the computer which serves your website to visitors. You cannot build the site per say on the server, what you would do is create the web pages on your computer at home/office and then upload the web pages to a special directory on the server. The web server would have to be configured to recognise that any visits to your chosen domain would be served by that server (this is easy to do).

[inishindie]

Thanks for geting back to me so promptly Frank.

I didn't have a clue how I set up the gardening website. I must have just pressed the right buttons!! I think I got the domain name off of the same site. I am looking forward to getting my teeth into something more professional.

I have lots of reading material here from the links that you sent me.

I will do a bit of studying and let you know how I get on.

Thanks again

Ian

[inishindie]

Hi Frank

I thought I would let you know that I am making progress with the site (still don't really know what I am doing!) I am using something called Joomla! It's a bit technical but I am getting there.

Thanks for your tips

Cheers

Ian

[frank]

[inishindie]

Hi all

Just to let you know, I have finally put the charity website together. It's early days yet and I'll be adding to it but at least it's going after nearly 2 years......

I opted for Joomla and have been very pleased with the help and support

http://noelinehaylett.org/

Cheers

Ian