I have never done a website and quite frankly, I know almost nothing about them. I am the adult leader for a teenage firefighting youth group and we have decided to put together a website in order to promote our organization.

Here is mainly what we want to do. (any other cool ideas would also be apreciated.
* Home page to decribe who we are - showing our logo.
* A place to put a photo gallery of the youth
* A how to join page
* Links to other youth groups like ours and possibly businesses that deal in fire or EMS stuff. (could this possible generate some money ?)
* A Newsletter page (updated quarterly)
* Current fundraisers and how peple can purchase
* Means of allowing people to donate to our organization.
* a contact us method - somehow send an email to us

Members only area:
* Calender of events
* Technical training page
* Blog by the organization leader
* A place to put all of our many standard operating procedures with an index to select them
* Archive of training plans
* Members would have to l;ogin and have their password.

These are just a few thoughts but i would be nice to have flexibility. With all the info on this site, it is difficult to know where to start and what software to use to create our site. I did by a software package called WE EASY Pro 7. It was only $50 and for all I know it won't be all that we need. Therefore I am asking the question, what should be the process for achieving our goal?

I would appreciate any advise. (Sorry for the lengthy thread).

Thanks,
Dan

It sounds to me like you need a CMS (content management system). Joomla! and Drupal are a few that are very popular and open source (free).

They will either have the features you need or allow them as plug-ins. I would spend some time looking into CMS programs and familiarize yourself with the different options they have, then find a host that can support it.

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Theresa :)

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I will probably known soon as the Joomla fanatic, but it really does everything you can imagine.

It's main purpose it to provide an article based website. It can have a lot of different components added to it, like calendar, subscription information, links to registered users only, forums, and much more.

I would love to work with you one on one if you like, although there are many tutorials out there that can help. http://siteground.com has a hosting plan that includes a lot of templates and gives some tutorials.

I am assuming you are wanting to do this all yourself, and not pay anyone, right...
But if you found a good web designer that set up the main site for you, they can guide you through on how to keep your site updated, and make money at it too.

Let me know if you need any help, I have some free time this weekend and could probably pull something together in a couple of hours.

-Jeremy

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Jeremy,

Thank you for the reply. Actually, I would someday like to be able to create a website as I will be starting a home business sin the futre. However, the site that I need now is for my youth group at the fire department. We would really like to have a nice site with the features (at least most of them) that I showed in the first post onthis thread. I am not all that sharp on computers ( I save lives and put out fires). If we could find someone that could create the site and help us to bring it to life, we would be willing to pay for such services (although we don't have a very big bank account).

We would like to be able to make changes on the site without having to master some kind software, etc.

As I said, we are all about youth learning firefighting and Emergency medical care.

Let me know what you think and maybe we can work something out.

Dan

All those things can definitely can be put up on a website, and having Joomla installed on the server would allow you to edit the content from any computer

Here is what Joomla looks like installed with their sample data. There is a template chooser if you wanna get a feel for what some site look like.
http://j-jgrafiks.com/TempSites/

Do you have already have a website? If not, do you have the information you want on the site?
Do you need designed graphics, or do you have a supply of some?
Do you already have a domain and/or hosting provider?

All of these play into question when getting your site up and running, but I would be more than glad to put this all together for you.

Just contact me with all the information you have on the organization, i.e. contact info, phone numbers, website (if any), etc., and the information you want on the websites.

You can just reply to this thread or click on the J & J Grafiks link below and there is an email form, or just message me through this forum.

-Jeremy

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Jeremy, that is some very useful information. In the future, can you please just post a link to Joomla's site with their examples instead of your own? That way I don't have hundreds of web designers posting samples to their sites. It might get out of control. I know you meant no harm, but just looking out for the entire board. Thanks. That's great advice. It's good to have more designers here. I may have a few questions for you myself.

__________________
Don't put the cart before the horse.
Plan your website, then create it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2 Create a Website | 2 Create a Website Blog
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I'm sorry about that, I wasn't sure if that was allowed or not. I will make sure I post the correct demo site next time. I just knew that URL off the top of my head.

Thanks for the heads up

__________________

No prob. Thanks for understanding.

__________________
Don't put the cart before the horse.
Plan your website, then create it.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
2 Create a Website | 2 Create a Website Blog
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Recent Blog Posts...

10 Reasons You Should Be YouTub-ing
Is Google AdSense Dead?
Ever Run Out of Blog Topics?

Jeremy,

Don't know if you received my email on Sunday. Hope I didn't scare you off. If you get a chance, I wouldlike to continue the dialog.

Sounds like you would be the person to help us out.

Eager to hear from you.

Dan

I never received your email. There is a Contact Page on the j-jgrafiks website. Did you use that?

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Jeremy,

Is Joomla a software program that can be downloaded to a computer? If so, where and how? Also, what about a tutorial, book, etc.

To answer your questions:

Do you have already have a website? If not, do you have the information you want on the site? No we do not have a website, we are trying to get one started. As far as the info required on the site, I guess that is hard to say since there is so much. We want to have a home page that tells about the organization. We want to have a page where we can have a newsletter about the group and be able to change it once a quarter. We want to have a picture gallery that shows our youth. We want to have a picture gallery of the youth doing their training. All pictures need to be changed as needed. We would like to put our training schedule on the site. Maybe some of the "member stuff would be in a section where we could have our members login with a password? We would like to have a way to link to other sites. I could go on and on but basically what I wrote in my first post on websitebabble. Specific info can be provided as requested.

Do you need designed graphics, or do you have a supply of some? We have pictures and our logo that we want on the site but as far as other graphics, we were looking for something really intense that deals with fire fighting.

Do you already have a domain and/or hosting provider? We do not have either but if possible we would like to have the website as www.AvonFireExplorers.org

Jeremy, I don't know if this helps get started but if you put together a list of specifics, I can fill in the blanks. What I was hoping for was a means of getting the things described in the forum and a site that really has "pizzaz". Also since we will be changing info regularly, it needs to be fairly simple to do (learn).

As a side note, I am a member of a another organization that deals in wood turning and I have seen many posts on that forum lately of guys looking for someone to assist with getting a website up and running, I wouldbe happy to pass your name along. Who knows, maybe some good business there. I will be doing a site someday soon for the same area of interest.

Look forward to hearing from you.

Dan