Setting up a website - need help

[MizzouRah]

I want to setup a website for our soccer team, but I have no clue where to go from there. :)

Basically I want a .com site that has an index page with links to things like a team roster, team calendar, forum, maybe something that when they click on their kids name, it shows their balance in their account.

Is there any easy way that a beginner can do this?

Thanks for any help any of you can give me!!!

[JonInMiddleGA]

The only semi-complicated thing I see there might be the account balance option, since I'd think you're going to want to password protect that & restrict access (i.e. I don't need to see your account balance, another person doesn't need to see my balance,etc). At that point you're out of my comfort zone but there won't be any shortage of people here who can help point you in the right direction.

Otherwise you can do the simplest things with most any WYSIWYG editor (I've always liked the old Netscape Composer for the most basic stuff but there's a lot of personal taste involved with choosing I think). Depending upon your ISP you may also have hosting space & web creation tools available that you could make most of this as simple as filling in a template.

[MizzouRah]

Anyone use this web hosting site: Web Hosting by FatCow - Affordable & E-Commerce Enabled (http://www.fatcow.com/fatcow/index.bml)

I read it's one of the best..

[MizzouRah]

The only semi-complicated thing I see there might be the account balance option, since I'd think you're going to want to password protect that & restrict access (i.e. I don't need to see your account balance, another person doesn't need to see my balance,etc). At that point you're out of my comfort zone but there won't be any shortage of people here who can help point you in the right direction.

Otherwise you can do the simplest things with most any WYSIWYG editor (I've always liked the old Netscape Composer for the most basic stuff but there's a lot of personal taste involved with choosing I think). Depending upon your ISP you may also have hosting space & web creation tools available that you could make most of this as simple as filling in a template.

Good point, we are all close parent wise since we've been together, but I didn't know if that was tacky to show account balances or not.

[JonInMiddleGA]

While I'm providing the lowest level advice possible, I'll throw out a low level question too. When you say a ".com site", I'm reading that to mean you have a specific URL in mind that you want to own & have this be located with, right?
Something like "ourteamscutename.com" is what I'm thinking here.

If not, I suspect there might be some youth soccer organizations/sites that offer basic team page hosting at no charge, you'd just be a subdomain URL (or else you could own your own name & then redirect it to the 3rd party site). Something like www.LilKidsBigSoccerMegaSite.com/ourteamnamehere

I've seen things like that for youth football, baseball, high school sports, etc so it seems reasonable to figure youth soccer has them too.

[MizzouRah]

Yes, I want our own yourteam.com site just specific to our team.

Gotsoccer is what I use for our team as far as the league we play in, but I want a site that parents can go to just for our team - that's easy to get to and easy to navigate.

[JonInMiddleGA]

If relative ease & simplicity is a primary goal, you might be in a situation where a template driven website could be one of the shortest routes to consider.

I don't know how much you're planning to spend a year on hosting & what not (or if you already have that figured out separately) but something like this
Website Hosting Services | Budget Hosting Plan Description (http://www.websitesource.com/hosting/budget_details.shtml#6)
might be one of the most basic plans around. Works out to about $7/month if you prepay two years worth, or about $10/month if you pay monthly.

In this case though I'm not so much advocating using these guys as your host as I am thinking their web design tools package (including with your hosting cost) seems to be a pretty reasonable example of what different hosts offer.
http://www.websitesource.com/webdesign/site_builder.shtml

Take a look & see if something like that might be both sufficient & user-friendly enough to suit your needs. If so, then most hosts have something along those lines available at no or low cost.

[MizzouRah]

Thank you Jon!

That is something like I think I'm looking for. It has a nice online demo too.. now the only thing I need to see is if I can setup a forum within the website.

[Matthean]

Thank you Jon!

That is something like I think I'm looking for. It has a nice online demo too.. now the only thing I need to see is if I can setup a forum within the website.

Home of SMF: Free PHP and MySQL forum software (http://www.simplemachines.org/)

[MizzouRah]

Home of SMF: Free PHP and MySQL forum software (http://www.simplemachines.org/)

Awesome.. so I can set this up within my website?

[Matthean]

Awesome.. so I can set this up within my website?

Yep, I used it when I was running a super group for City of Heroes.

[Danny]

I used Drupal to build the website for my grad school program. It has a moderate learning curve, but has a large array of templates/modules and is very powerful.

[MizzouRah]

Thanks everyone! I have some research to do.. really appreciate the help!!!

[DanGarion]

I'd suggest signing up with Dreamhost and then maybe using their Easy Wordpress One Click Install. You don't really need to know much to get it to work if you use the easy option...

[lordscarlet]

Outside of the account balance situation, I would advise you to simple use google sites, google calendar, etc. They may allow you to restrict pages based on accounts, but I'm not sure on that one. It's simple and quick for someone that has no knowledge of how to do such things.

Google Apps for business – collaboration tools (http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/collaboration.html)

[Subby]

Definitely go the wordpress route.

[MizzouRah]

I use google calendar now.. I just want it all integrated into one site.

[MizzouRah]

Checking out Dreamhost and wordpress.

[lordscarlet]

I use google calendar now.. I just want it all integrated into one site.

Which you can do with google hosted sites. :)

[MizzouRah]

thanks lordscarlet!