Looking for Advice for a School Site

[Althius]

I volunteered (perhaps foolishly) to help put together my churches school website.

I already did the site for the church, and now the school wants to have their site 'match' the church site.

Each teacher needs to have a page for their class. They need to be able to edit their page (and only their page), and since their skills vary widely, some sort of WYSIWYG editor would be a good thing.

I know almost nothing about CMS and would really appreciate some help. I've looked into some 'blog' type software, but I need something that can be used within the current 'design' structure.

Thanks in advance.

[bill]

This could be done with something like MovableType or another blog engine used as a CMS. It really depends on what you're comfortable with and what your server will support. Try taking a look at sites like OpenSourceCMS or CMS Matrix to compare the features.

[stever]

Since you did ask for advice...

...I think you should ask yourself (and answer the question honestly) whether your skill set is sufficient to deal with implementing a website which is dealing with children. If the children are to have any access at all, then the question is even more important.

I consider myself a professional and I would probably still hand a job like this off to someone I knew who had experience in the problems which are inherent in an educational site.

Having talked to someone who does deal with schools (in the UK), one major factor is security (both ingoing and outgoing). Another is the formal standards which it is necessary to implement in any websites receiving public funding (some of which are currently being discussed elsewhere) in certain countries.

This is not meant to put you (or other readers) off taking jobs like this, just to get you to think about what they can entail.

[Lobo]

Contribute ... you can set permissions for each person to only edit their page and they will only have access to the editible regions...

[elklabone]

I used to be a teacher and set up a PHP-Nuke site for our school. It's worked pretty well. You definitely want a CMS system of some kind. I hear Mambo is easy to use...

Good luck.

--Mark

[Althius]

Thanks for the suggestions (and warnings) all. Contribute is awesome, I wish I could afford the $1,100 dollars it would cost for an 'educational' license.

BUT I did find a great one called Big Medium that seems to be very close to contribute as far as ease of use and functionality goes, but is only $129.

Once again thanks for the help!

[Lobo]

Well there is no harm in proposing the purchase to the school ...

In terms of their budget, spread over 3 or 5 years, it is not a huge investment...

alternatively could you not set it up on one machine and allow people to access it through that one?