opinions on wordpress or Joomla - Welcome to recommendations / suggestions from the peanut gallery...

So I am doing a friend of my family a "favor" they need a website rebuilt.

So far it has been nothing but a headache. "Some kid" they had working for them set it up. I had a blast ripping the site from the website because they did not have their FTP info, hell they did not even know who hosted it.

I held their hand through all that, found their ISP, called in got FTP info and we pulled the files down.

Now, I am not a web designer, I have dabbled in the past, created a couple sites in Dreamweaver. I am a print guy. Give me photoshop and Illustrator and I am a madman. Not to give away my age, but I first learned photoshop on version 2.0 back in 1991.

So.. here is my question.... Wordpress, is it still the program to use or... Is there something new and better I have not heard of?

Reason I ask, is all the articles and helpfile are from 2009-2010, looks like it used to be free for everything, now all the good themes make you pay for theme.

I am confident I can use it to build a site, and train their teenage kid to keep it updated, Hell I can even build a theme in Lubith, instead of hunting for something close to what they want.

I want a solution that I can rebuild thier site, and say "DONE! Here you go... It is all yours, and run like hell"

Any help would be appreciated...

Skip


EDIT!!!! I looked into Joomla and want opinons on them as well, anybody feel free to chime in!!!

ya what you saying should work. What type of site is it? The important thing to do with wordpress is to keep it up to date on releases. Security holes are always fixed and they are usually exploited so pages get spammed or taken over if you don't patch.

Quote from skipadedodah : So I am doing a friend of my family a "favor" they need a website rebuilt. So far it has been nothing but a headache. "Some kid" they had working for them set it up. I had a blast ripping the site from the website because they did not have their FTP info, hell they did not even know who hosted it. I held their hand through all that, found their ISP, called in got FTP info and we pulled the files down. Now, I am not a web designer, I have dabbled in the past, created a couple sites in Dreamweaver. I am a print guy. Give me photoshop and Illustrator and I am a madman. Not to give away my age, but I first learned photoshop on version 2.0 back in 1991. So.. here is my question.... Wordpress, is it still the program to use or... Is there something new and better I have not heard of? Reason I ask, is all the articles and helpfile are from 2009-2010, looks like it used to be free for everything, now all the good themes make you pay for theme. I am confident I can use it to build a site, and train their teenage kid to keep it updated, Hell I can even build a theme in Lubith, instead of hunting for something close to what they want. I want a solution that I can rebuild thier site, and say "DONE! Here you go... It is all yours, and run like hell" Any help would be appreciated... Skip

What is the purpose of this webpage? Word press is a blog more then a webpage (it could function as a cms). For a simple to manage cms (since they are not technical people) you can look at Joomla! Of course the other issue is someone needs to keep the webpage up to date as new exploits are always coming out and at some point someone is going to use the page for spam/ other bad stuff.

It is a standard couple page site, mostly want to add pictures...

However emphasis is on ease of adding content... I can babysit and go in ad add updates from time to time, that will be over their head.

I have heard of Joomla, never looked into it, how will it be for a non-technical person to update content once I hand it over?

Alrighty!!! Changed title of this thread... Watched some videos on Joomla, maybe the way to go.

Building two sites... First for a hair salon, second a band.

The salon had horrible site, am working on rebuilding, adding pictures and elements, not to tough.

The second is a band, all they want is a few pages, home, contact, schedule, photos and maybe a site where they upload songs.

Both products offer music tools, both have storefront check out tools...

I DONT like wordpress' blog enviornment, when I moved from one template to another, had issues where at the bottom of every "text box" a share to twitter, facebook showed up. Also don't like the time date stamp that shows up.

From my "VERY LIMITED" playing around with Joomla seems a little smoother.

What I am worried about is handing over the keys to a noob, to try and enter their data... Which is an easier "for dummies" platform???

Quote from skipadedodah : Alrighty!!! Changed title of this thread... Watched some videos on Joomla, maybe the way to go. Building two sites... First for a hair salon, second a band. The salon had horrible site, am working on rebuilding, adding pictures and elements, not to tough. The second is a band, all they want is a few pages, home, contact, schedule, photos and maybe a site where they upload songs. Both products offer music tools, both have storefront check out tools... I DONT like wordpress' blog enviornment, when I moved from one template to another, had issues where at the bottom of every "text box" a share to twitter, facebook showed up. Also don't like the time date stamp that shows up. From my "VERY LIMITED" playing around with Joomla seems a little smoother. What I am worried about is handing over the keys to a noob, to try and enter their data... Which is an easier "for dummies" platform???

I have worked on Joomla, Drupal, Blogger and Wordpress sites. In order of difficulty, I would put Drupal at the top, followed by Joomla, Wordpress and Blogger. I had weird problems with Drupal, but they may have been the fault of my host, which was terrible at the time. I switched hosts, but I also switched to Wordpress. Wordpress is very smooth but really geared towards bloggers. I don't think anyone would have much difficulty with Wordpress, but security may be an issue if they are totally clueless. You will need to see to that. Blogger is total no-brainer. Google handles everything. So Blogger should be your choice for a less technically sophisticated person. If Blogger is too limiting, then choose Wordpress.

Quote from skipadedodah : Alrighty!!! Changed title of this thread... Watched some videos on Joomla, maybe the way to go. Building two sites... First for a hair salon, second a band. The salon had horrible site, am working on rebuilding, adding pictures and elements, not to tough. The second is a band, all they want is a few pages, home, contact, schedule, photos and maybe a site where they upload songs. Both products offer music tools, both have storefront check out tools... I DONT like wordpress' blog enviornment, when I moved from one template to another, had issues where at the bottom of every "text box" a share to twitter, facebook showed up. Also don't like the time date stamp that shows up. From my "VERY LIMITED" playing around with Joomla seems a little smoother. What I am worried about is handing over the keys to a noob, to try and enter their data... Which is an easier "for dummies" platform???

easier? woodpress. But I would not use the storefront!! Honestly they don't know enough to keep the system up to date enough to be worth the risk.

For the hairdresser I would go with joomla, a blog is just not clean enough for them.

The band should have lots of new data and a blog would be decent (wordpress) , joomla would also be good.

As for joomla, I would make "admin" accounts to make major changes, and users accounts who can only do updates to post. This will help prevent them from messing something big up.

I've been using WordPress as both a blogging platform and a very rudimentary CMS for the last few years (both for myself [poormet.com]and clients [freshcosalonspa.com]). WordPress has developed itself into much more than just a means to blog... I am happy whenever I get a chance to use it building smaller companies' websites.

I honestly don't think you can go wrong with either of your choices, they both have an incredible amount of documentation, plugins, and very helpful users. Whichever way you decide to go, if you want to save yourself some time check out themeforest [themeforest.net] for cheaper premium themes.

Let me know if you have any questions.

For a simple site, Anchor [anchorcms.com]or TinyCMS [designskate.com]might be worth a look.

I gave Joomla a try last year when someone asked me to work on their site. I found it to be completely non-intuitive, but that's just my experience.

Thanks all. I am going to play with both. I was just told their is no immediate hurry. Both clients received sticker shock with quotes from web building companies, and not "geek" enough to build their own.

Thanks everyone from your advice. I will look into the other resources recommended. Thanks all.

Who rebuilds a website as a favor? That's not like setting up someone's router here, that crap is going to take many many hours. If something is going to take more than a few hours, that's outside the "favor" territory.

I would get her on over to http://www.squarespace.com/ and help answer questions, but let this person do the brunt of the work. If this person doesn't want to do any of the work then let them hire a professional instead of trying to prey on your overly good graces.

Quote from brbubba : Who rebuilds a website as a favor?.

She is really hot and let's me do despicable things to her... The "favor" gets repaid, I will let her "work it off"

I'm late to the game here, but I have made a few wordpress sites (possibly the easiest site to do period) and many joomla. I like what joomla can do and that is my recommendation.

It can be as easy and basic as you want or really get deep and have lots of functionality. There is a huge community that builds modules and extensions for joomla.