New School Website

[STK91]

Hi,

 

I have been given the job to look after our school website. We are currently using WordPress and the back end is not very user friendly unless you are a WordPress developer. Can anyone recommend me anything open source or themes I could use for a secondary school website?

 

Thanks, Steve

[Danp]

What about Joomla? I did a site for our sports centre using that. Some have said they prefer that to the main school site that cost a lot of money!

[3s-gtech]

If you find Wordpress isn't user friendly, Joomla will break you. IME things don't get much simpler than Wordpress while staying free - I currently run WP, Joomla and Moodle installs for different features and they're all fine but I have many years of experience with Joomla and Moodle. WP was like a breath of fresh air.

 

I don't recommend dropping out of using a CMS if you're not a developer - maintaining the site will quickly become impossible for any large changes or even things like news updates.

[7UD9]

Concrete5 is open source, I like it a lot.

[jmak]

I put ours together using Google sites - not the most customisable, but straightforward to use. Free for schools and does more than what you need. Responsive design built in, lots of "widget" style add ins and you can easily customise the HTML for content blocks. For items which non-technical staff regularly update, I embed either folders or docs from Google Drive. Users then just upload an updated document on drive and it appears on the website.

 

Steegle.com is an excellent resource if you go this route.

[Gibbo]

If you find Wordpress isn't user friendly, Joomla will break you.

 

Agree. We went from WP to Joomla and I hate it.

[mikkydoos]

You could always use Dreamweaver... but then again if you want the site to actually work .....

 

(Do they still make dreamweaver ??)

 

 

EDIT: They do !

Edited March 2, 2016 by mikkydoos

[RichCowell]

+1 for Concrete5 - before I moved the school site to Schudio I used Concrete5, WordPress wasn't logical to me, I hated it... so never had the patience to really get to grips with it... Concrete5 was simple and logical, but still really customisable...

[DGardiner]

Hi,

 

I have been given the job to look after our school website. We are currently using WordPress and the back end is not very user friendly unless you are a WordPress developer. Can anyone recommend me anything open source or themes I could use for a secondary school website?

 

Thanks, Steve

 

 

buy a theme that ships with a decent visual designer it works wonders for usability.(or buy the plugin separate)

[Love_Sausage]

Hi,

 

I have been given the job to look after our school website. We are currently using WordPress and the back end is not very user friendly unless you are a WordPress developer. Can anyone recommend me anything open source or themes I could use for a secondary school website?

 

Thanks, Steve

 

I'm definitely no Wordpress developer but have created and managed half a dozen fairly complex Wordpress sites. Take a little time to dig around, buy a decent theme (Themeforest best sellers usually fit that bill) that has a good solid interface and you'll be fine. You won't find easier in my opinion.

[davethetekkie]

+1 for Wordpress... I've tried a few others (including Joomla and no... Just no) and it's definitely one of the easiest out there. PyroCMS was promising but needed a lot of poking and prodding so I've since moved back to WP.

[ben_mayo]

One of the schools I manage uses Concrete5 while the other uses WordPress.

 

I don't maintain the websites, that is done from TA's but Concrete5 seems to be easier to develop compared to WordPress (or maybe the TA's abilities differ incredibly differently)

 

 

I've seen the workings of Concrete5 though and I'd recommend that.

[ataylor]

Currently running Joomla, was a nightmare to learn and there is not many good free plugins.

 

I'm now playing around with WordPress to make an intranet.

[Danp]

Interesting to hear people say Joomla is a nightmare etc, I have been building websites since the mid 90s and find Joomla quite easy to use, I would not say it's all completely click click done but it's not far from it. I have also used Wordpress for my own personal site in the past as well as customers.

[unixman_again]

+1 for Joomla. We abandoned WP (so -1 for WP!) on our intranet, firstly in favour of SP (which lasted about 6 months before we binned it for being too cumbersome) and then moved to Joomla. I completely disagree with ataylor - there are many excellent free plugins. There are some good paid for ones too. I've found Joomla documentation to be very clear.

[ataylor]

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind Joomla, I am still using it for our main site. I just found it quite difficult to get my head around it.

[ijk]

Another top notch CMS to look at is ProcessWire Open Source CMS

[mikeprice]

I had a problem when I started that the school website had just died - and the only person who could access it had unfortunately really just died (very sad - young kids at the school etc etc)

 

Anyway - I had to get a full website online in no time - so I looked at companies that do it for you - I ended up with PrimarySite (OK not relevant for you but there must be equivalents) and it is much easier to change/configure and takes very little time - well worth the extra cost

 

I suggest you look at how much time you have free to set the thing u, populate it - and then maintain it and also how easy it would be for people in the office (e.g.) and dept. heads to update their areas without messing up the whole thing and see if an external company would suit you better

 

Ideally I would suggest that the ideal is for other people to be able to have access to their own areas rather than ALL updates going through one person - but that's just me

 

please feel free to ignore me

[Nixon77]

If you really want click, click, done, use Weebly.

 

I see some schools have. (using a really old theme)

 

ÂAshton Vale Primary School - Home

Edited March 3, 2016 by Nixon77