Website Design

[Simcfc73]

Hi,

How do you guys run your school website. I am the onyl It person at this school which is okay but it does mean I need to do everything... including the website. The current one looks crap but I know DW and Flash pretty well but I have no artistic ability whatsoever so I can spend all day updating the site but end up with something that looks crap.

Anyone recommend a website design company that does whizz bang websites for a couple fo quid?

I found a nice website that I may * copy * the structure from and put my stuff in but I've done this a few times and its always ended up looking awful.

[beeswax]

show us what you've got

[webman]

Grab a layout from here or here.

And/Or:

Grab a Content Management System to allow people to update their own content - test drive them here. Limbo/Joomla/Website Baker/Drupal highly recommended.

[alan-d]

sent you a pm which may be of help

[NetworkGeezer]

Share the secret

Agree with webman regarding the CMS route. I run my school sites on Joomla. Once you have your core info inputed changing the look of the site is as simple as downloading your chosen Joomla template and applying it.

www.joomla.org

[webman]

Top-notch, SYSMAN_MK!

Why thank you Sir ops:

[tarquel]

nice theme SYSMAN_MK

Can i ask if you made it yourself or not?

btw you are required to have the joomla copyright shown i believe - unless you paid for it from them.... or something along those lines.

Cheers
Nath.

[mark]

Looks like a Mamboteam template too

It's the flash banner that makes it tho' - very slick!

Nice, clean, simple design. Credit to you sir!

+ like the calendar - must use that

[beeswax]

@SYSMAN_MK: such a simple design and yet so effective. the quality of the images goes a long way to improving the look of the site as well.

I think joomla and mambo are still pretty interchangeable aren't they?

beeswax

[tarquel]

In most things they are, but not everything.

Nath.

Cheers for the input guys

The template is a modified pay for template from http://www.joomlashack.com I modified it to add the flash header, which can be modified very easily from the backend, plus I am setting up different headers for the different sections.

When the site goes live staff will add weblinks / documents / calendar dates / photos all from the front end.

Joomla is justa great piece of CMS.

[NetworkGeezer]

If using a fully fledged CMS as above is too much like hardwork why not create a guest account for your VLE. This appears to be what some schools in xGfL are doing.

[MartinDixon]

i used a template from here http://www.projectseven.com/
for our school site http://www.chelseachildrenshospitalschool.org/
tho it badly needs a redesign
want to make it WC3 compliant and incoporate some form of CMS...