Producing : Best Website Templates? by Karen Goldfarb

Karen, You really need a content management system (CMS) that will allow you to easily update and manage the pages of the site. As for the donations, there are plenty of extension modules for CMS available. I recommend Joomla. http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/extension/e-commerce/donations/j...

WordPress.com

woo themes has e-commerce and a template called for the cause, it's a clean modern design on a wordpress platform.

Thanks guys... I was leaning toward Wix.. I h ave seen WEEBLY yet.. isn't WordPress just for blogs? and Mike.. do you have a suggestion for a CMS? Best, Karen

A lot of templates out there are built for wordpress -- it started as a blogging platform but has grown to much more while keeping things very user friendly. Square space is another option but it takes a little more digging into to set up. The key you'll need to decide is the e-commerce which is why I suggested the woo theme for wordpress. Wordpress as a stand alone does not have that ability and any platform you build on will need a commerce widget even if it just ties to paypal. Depending on your timing, there's an interesting thing on the horizon called grid.io, which essentially uses artificial intelligence to build a site in minutes -- but they won't have e-commerce until late in the year.

Wordpress is a type of CMS not necessarily just for blogs however given that it is blog focused there are restrictions with layout. Weekly and Wix are essentially the same thing. There are restrictions with their free service offerings. Such as I do not believe you can use a payment feature. Also you will have weebly or wix as part of your URL. Joomla is a CMS that I use most often. Though Joomla is free you have to pay for hosting and for a URL.

this is all a bit techno-speak for me.. so if I use wix or weekly or wotever.. I stil need to get the cms.. which I can get hrough Joomla?

No. Wix and Weebly use their own CMS.

Thank you so much you guys.. I will check all of this out later.. CJ.. I was looking at Weebly earlier.. u think i cld do it with the $8 per month Pro program?

Thanks CJ

Karen ... the problem with things like Weebly and Wix is that they nickle and dime you. Example [and I believe Weebly is similar]: A Wix domain name costs you $25/mo. I pay $10.35 per quarter. That's $300/year as opposed to $42/year. You must ALSO have your website hosted on their servers. You can get an inexpensive plan but, unless you select their super-duper premium service [$24.95/mo] any support you request will be non-priority. Meaning, when all the priority people are out of the cue. All that doesn't include the cost of the template you use. On the other hand, WordPress has a lot of very nice --- FREE --- templates. With WordPress, you aren't tied to one website hosting company; you can have your site hosted on any server that has WordPress installed. The reality is --- you will have to develop a knowledge of website hosting, management, etc., regardless of what you use. This is a good discussion: http://www.wpbeginner.com/beginners-guide/why-is-wordpress-free-what-are... IF you do WordPress, this is, in my opinion, the best book: http://www.amazon.com/WordPress-Missing-Manual-Matthew-MacDonald-ebook/d... You could get someone to put it together for you [your website]. The problem is ... anybody with a computer can purport to be a web designer. They think it's an easy money business. My advice is to do it yourself and consider it as part of your marketing skill set development just like FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.

Thanks... it's all starting to sound very daunting.. although I did once have a blog on wordpress and had it hosted by go daddy.. which was fine.. is that kind of what you mean?

Yes. But WordPress has become much more than a blog. There are website Templates available --- some for free, some which cost --- that you can have hosted anywhere. GoDaddy is one. I use Stormwire [it's much cheaper]. Don't be intimidated, it's not as complicated as it seems. It depends on how sophisticated you want to get.

Ok.. i'll check it all out later.. thanks so much for your help!

Any time.

will do.. thank u

Karen, Wix, Weebly, SquareSpace are there to take advantage of those that don't know how to create their own sites. Not that there is anything wrong with that. There are positives and negatives. It's great for ease of use and simplification, but you are limited to their templates and they charge you more than what it would cost if you built your own site. I have done this for friends in the past (www.sabva.com and www.ifoia.gov) i built both of these sites and they cost approximately $80 annually (per site) to include hosting and domain name renewal. I built both of these sites using Joomla which is a free CMS and using free extensions and plugins. The downside is you need someone that knows what they are doing to build the site for you initially. With Wix, Weebly, SquareSpace, etc. you are looking at paying about three times that amount annually but you don't have to have the extensive knowledge to use them.

To be honest guys.. I just need something simple.. the simpler the better.. technology is not my strong suit.. so if Wix, Weebly and SquareSpace take some of the guess work out of it.. i'm not too proud.. thanks for all 0of your input..;)

SIMPLE and CHEAP you need to go the WordPress route and then install something from ThemeForest.net . No programming needed. Use webhostingpad.com as the host.

I use wordpress and elementor it's free but I can show you how to use it. http://plyflynt.com

elementor pro is US$59 one off payment

but it's not the simplest to use, it's cheaper than wix or any alternative though, because you're just paying for hosting and domain and if you want pro but that's a one-off payment whereas website builders are ridiculously high monthly payments.

for US$200 you can get a basic website with wp