posted by
janrinok
on Saturday June 25 2022, @07:39PM
from the Yearning-for-the-days-of-Dreamweaver dept.
from the Yearning-for-the-days-of-Dreamweaver dept.
I date back to the days before HTTPS was a thing, when web sites were written in Notepad. Since then I've worked through various editors and programs including Dreamweaver, Joomla, WordPress (of course) and on-line things like Wix.com and Substack. Now we find that we have a half dozen small web sites to manage or update, in different platforms, and all which are small enough that WordPress et al are serious overkill. I've done some research and have come up with no sure solution to get us out of this mess. Here's what we need.
- Open source, hosted in our own web space. No cloud based things
- Simple interface - for a couple of dozen pages without the need for massive database backends we don't need a Joomla or WordPress. Plus a non-techy user can update stuff easily.
- Obviously has to work for desktop browsers and on the phone.
- Has to handle some media like images and present YouTube hosted videos well.
- SIMPLE Has to be SIMPLE to update and manage.
I'm needing suggestions, and even better, URLs for sites that use simple packages. Please folks, save me hundreds of hours of trial and error.
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Advice Needed: Best Simple Website Platform.
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(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 25 2022, @08:00PM (1 child)
https://gohugo.io/ [gohugo.io]
You don't even need to use HTML; instead, just write a page in Markdown, and it generates a nice static site. Easy enough for the average person to edit once they're told what to edit.
(Score: 5, Informative) by gozar on Saturday June 25 2022, @08:09PM
I’m a big fan of and use Hugo, which is one of many static website generators. They work really well and the sites can be hosted anywhere.
(Score: 4, Informative) by bradley13 on Saturday June 25 2022, @08:04PM (5 children)
Currently, I'm managing a couple of simple sites by hand, using responsive templates from w3schools [w3schools.com]. Installing some behemoth just makes no sense.
Much as one likes to hate Microsoft, I want some modern equivalent of Frontpage. Haven't found one yet.
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 0, Disagree) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 25 2022, @10:24PM
Notepad
(Score: 5, Interesting) by DannyB on Sunday June 26 2022, @02:23AM (1 child)
One major issue with Front Page 2000 was the license. The license said you could not use Front Page to write anything critical of Microsoft or Expedia or their products or services.
Any website written in Front Page would be screamingly obvious (looking at the "view source"). Once you know that, you cannot trust anything the site says about Microsoft, or the other mentioned goods or services.
Yes. Really. I am serious. This was a real thing with the FP 2000 license.
To transfer files: right-click on file, pick Copy. Unplug mouse, plug mouse into other computer. Right-click, paste.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2022, @05:23AM
That seems to be false: https://slashdot.org/story/01/09/20/1443226/microsoft-frontpage-license-prohibits-anti-microsoft-speech [slashdot.org]
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday June 26 2022, @02:42AM (1 child)
Ha, I want an updated AOLpress (1997). Any post-2000 version of Frontpage as a near second, but for my plain-HTML sites with lots of internal links, I still can't find anything to replace AOLpress. Why? Because it follows links like a browser, without needing to open a new tab for each. Irreplaceable feature.
When I was working on other folks' sites, I'd use Frontpage to clean up the mess left by Dreamweaver. Never have I seen another program so actively user-hostile as DW.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 07 2022, @02:07PM
This brings back memories. Dreamweaver2 was great for designing the page. Import it into Frontpage to clean it up and publish. It worked well.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Samantha Wright on Saturday June 25 2022, @08:14PM (5 children)
Alas, while you emphasized "simple" repeatedly, it's a subjective thing. (This is a universal problem when non-programmers people try to communicate what they want from computers.) I'm not sure you fully know what your requirements are—based on the outline given my first reaction was, "What, writing HTML in Notepad isn't good enough for you?" but then I realised most of the examples of website frameworks you gave also handle page templates (layouts), online editing, multiple user access, commenting, and a whole host of other things that are of unclear relevance to your core needs.
Instead of trying to make comparisons to extant, finished, highly idiosyncratic software products, start with the technically "simplest" bare minimum experience (i.e. viewing a plain text file in your web browser) and explain how it is deficient.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Saturday June 25 2022, @08:23PM (2 children)
Great approach. Also, as I posted below, most word processors - which people are usually already familiar with - will edit html, and should be pretty comfortable for the non-technical user (who already uses that word processor). Of course, fiddling will be needed, esp. with "Word"...
(Score: 4, Informative) by Reziac on Sunday June 26 2022, @02:45AM (1 child)
Yep -- word processors might make kinda ugly HTML, but they'll do the job. And it's probably the easiest approach for the non-techie who nonetheless is tasked with creating a web page.
My preferred RTF editor exports HTML... using the free MSWord Internet Assistant plugin that was released in 1995. Some things don't need much change. :)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday June 26 2022, @04:47AM
Truer words were never spoken.
(Score: 3, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Sunday June 26 2022, @12:20AM
In addition to HTML in notepad, I believe that you can save Libre Office documents in web ready HTML.
The simple criteria makes certain advice impossible, but whatever tool they choose, establishing a pattern that serves the needs, then replicating that pattern with varying content is the way to go.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Sunday June 26 2022, @10:59PM
This, this, this.
What is a "website platform"? What is "our own web space"? Have you already bought servers and set up in a colo?
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Saturday June 25 2022, @08:19PM (15 children)
Have you tried WordPress? I admin WordPress (and other non-WordPress sites) and I'd be embarrassed to tell you how old the servers are and how little CPU and RAM they have (need).
I don't mean to be a WordPress shill, but there are so many great free plugins and themes.
Somehow WordPress has negative reputations and sure, long ago there were problems. I've been admin for 14 years now and have had no problems.
Besides some nice simple themes, there's a plugin that's my favorite: wptouch It makes the desktop site much simpler, clean, fits into phone & tablet screens.
There are some great simple-to-use WYSIWYG editors for the site- simple to use for non-techs: siteorigin-panels and a few extra support ones for css, widgets. Also, bigger and more capable: elementor
Mysql / mariadb very easy to set up and admin. I even use a phenomenal database admin tool (that people here have railed against) called phpMyAdmin.
I'm curious what you've experienced with WordPress and why you don't like it.
All that said, most wordprocessors will edit html. (I'm very partial to WordPerfect.) Open/Libre office. KDE has Kompozer
There are many online html editors.
Also: https://www.linuxlinks.com/htmleditors/ [linuxlinks.com]
(while I'm at it: "wix" produces the most horrendous garbage I've ever seen. I've never seen a wix site render well, if at all, on my various browsers.)
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 25 2022, @08:28PM (1 child)
You must be mistaken, sir. I’ve seen wix websites render on all the browsers I’ve used. Never in the way the WYSIWYG creator meant. But, by God, it rendered… something.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by RS3 on Saturday June 25 2022, @09:10PM
That's awesome, thanks.
I often use _Old Opera_ (not chrome-based), with images, javascript, plugins, etc., turned OFF, and wix sites are blank. They seem to be entirely javascript. Even with javascript ON, and even with up-to-date Vivaldi (chrome derivative) they're often blank, or something weird (as you so eloquently describe!)
My cynical (but probably true) hunch is they want to force the use of javascript so they can run all their spying routines. But I'm just guessing...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 25 2022, @09:27PM (2 children)
Please god no. If you think that running wordpress on a machine that you administer is a good thing, you must either have no regard for security or enjoy keeping up to date with all of the security advisories.
I realise that most of the security advisories stem from poorly implemented plugins and that you are safe (for some approximation of safe) if you don't use those plugins, but if you don't need plugins then you probably don't need wordpress.
I'd recommend going for something far more static. I've used pelican: https://blog.getpelican.com [getpelican.com] for simple sites. The big plus side is that it generates static pages which means that there is next to no attack surface.
__
The major
(Score: 3, Informative) by RS3 on Saturday June 25 2022, @10:13PM (1 child)
Do you actually admin WordPress? Because I do, and have done for over 14 years, and as I already wrote, have had no problems. No security problems. So I'm not sure why people write what you wrote- please tell me about your experience, problems you've had, etc. I need to learn.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2022, @04:30PM
https://www.cvedetails.com/product/4096/Wordpress-Wordpress.html?vendor_id=2337 [cvedetails.com]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Sunday June 26 2022, @02:16AM (4 children)
What I don't like about WordPress is the hosting company that has inserted itself between the ostensible owners of the website, and the servers. For anything beyond basic editing of webpages, the "owner" of the website has to beg the vendor to do it. Want to back up your website locally? Tough. The "owner" does not have access to the server. It's a simple task for a system admin to make a tarball of the web files, but you have to be able to log in. Otherwise, what, scrape your own website??
Want to host a forum? That feature costs extra. Email addresses? More $ please, and we'll keep you children safe from naughty evil spam!
Another nasty are these skins. The skins I've seen seem designed to obfuscate the settings to the max, making it impossibly difficult for the owner to change the appearance. Search online for info on how to change a particular setting, get results pointing you to a specific file and edit it, then find that nothing changed because, unknown to the owner, that file has somehow been relegated to the shadows, overridden by the skin's own completely undocumented arrangement of configuration files. May be told that, well, if you upgrade to the pay version of the skin, then you can edit that setting you want to change.
Commercialized WordPress is an insult to freedom and intelligence.
(Score: 4, Informative) by RS3 on Sunday June 26 2022, @04:24AM (3 children)
Thanks. I'll glean questions out of your statements.
- The WordPress sites I admin are on physical servers that I (alone) admin. IE: built the hardware, installed and configured all hardware and software, RAID, backup system, router/gateway and its firewall, static NAT, etc. Only 1 other person has physical access (locked and alarmed special room in small office building that is locked and alarmed) - the owner, who is quite technically savvy but never touches the servers, just does some html editing.
- For the more tech savvy readers: there are two Internet feeds to the building (maybe 3- one tenant has their own I think) and although the aforementioned servers share that Internet connection, I installed separate routers and subnets for the building tenants.
- WordPress "content" is held in the mysql database, not in html files. So you just do a mysql backup, and there are many ways to do that. I have scripts in cron.daily.
- I don't know anything about "skins".
- None of the hosted sites have ever used any sketchy plugins. All free, most if not all available on wordpress's website for download. Same with themes.
- Several are e-commerce running woocommerce. People buy stuff. Works great.
- All that said, I help another small company whose website is WordPress-based, hosted somewhere, and there's a pretty good admin panel to help with the "back-end" chores like configuration, backups, etc. Works well. Of course I prefer the actual physical server on-site.
- I'm happy to answer questions, so ask away.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Sunday June 26 2022, @11:25AM (2 children)
Yes, in WordPress the term for "skins" is "themes". I suppose WordPress is merely the system, it's the vendors who are the problem.
What happens is a small business or a small time politician needs a website, quick, and they rush out and jump into one of those WaaS deals in which the vendor carefully holds back functionality, crucial access, and data. Dissatisfied customers who want to take their business elsewhere can be screwed. Where I come in is as an independent hired on (or in the case of a political campaign, a volunteer) who could help administer the website if only I had full access. I warn the bosses about the deal to which they've unwittingly committed themselves, but it's already too late, they got themselves roped into the monthly fee arrangement before I entered the picture. Beyond warning them about the bad deal, most of what I can do is same as any other luser, edit web pages through a crippled WordPress interface that does not have features such as backing up the website to a file. I tried demanding of the vendor that they give us more access, and those bastards merely created an another account with ever so slightly more access that still has no real access, while blowing a lot of smoke about security. I had to install some kind of password challenge and response software to access this special account.
From the boss's perspective, it makes little difference whether the website is at the mercy of a WaaS vendor, or a hired hand in house, such as me. In either case, they don't have the knowledge and skills to do much anyway.
I have seen this even with the themes. Yet another vendor offers a crippleware basic theme for free, dangling the fully functional version for $. The crippleware theme doesn't merely omit functionality, it breaks some of it. And it often isn't a one time payment either, no, they want that sweet monthly payment. You want the latest updates and patches, don't you? A political campaign is the very sort of customer most easily sucked into such bad deals.
One of the dirtiest things about these arrangements is the pretenses the vendor puts on, and which customers too uncritically accept. Having to pay additional for each month of each email address, a forum, and even pay extra for a plain old blog is too readily thought of as normal.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Spamalope on Sunday June 26 2022, @04:18PM
I've absolutely has salespeople try to woo managers at my employer into web deals where there is a several hundred dollar a month fee, $2-4k initial fee and then it's a Wordpress or Joomla front end with -nothing- but a basic template installed. The lUser must write/craft everything. Then contractually all work product is owned by the vendor, who restricts any ability to backup the mySQL database. In fact, by contract, you'd be in violation if you rekeyed the content elsewhere manually.
(Score: 2) by RS3 on Sunday June 26 2022, @09:26PM
You make all good points, and I don't mean to sound like (too many) feisty people on these blogs / forums, but your excellent post is all in the specific context you described- WaaS.
Everything I wrote is in the context of self-hosting- having actual physical servers and full physical access to them. I'm not sure if that's what the original top-level post is referring to.
Hearing about the terrible business deals you described is disheartening. For some reason I keep thinking society will improve and such things will somehow be illegal, and generally people will behave better and we'll have less, not more unethical behavior.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Reziac on Sunday June 26 2022, @02:55AM (4 children)
Last I looked, I vaguely recall WIX was using some form of Trellix. Which is the only thing I've seen make uglier code than Dreamweaver, and that takes some doing.
I know of a number of Wordpress dizzyasters, where something simple like a bad theme made it throw up, but all were amateur installs. I don't use it myself but I get the feeling it's best set up by someone who actually knows what they're doing, and then it'll behave a lot better.
I keep hoping to find an updated basic-HTML editor that can replace AOLpress, but it ain't happened yet... solely because of its link-following feature (behaves like a browser, which is a huge timesaver when you have a bazillion internal links), plus the nice ability to swap back and forth between wysiwyg and raw text. SeaMonkey's Composer comes closest, of those I've tried.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by RS3 on Sunday June 26 2022, @04:41AM (3 children)
WordPress is bloody simple. You just need Apache (that's the fun part!) or nginx (da comrade), mysql (or mariadb), and php.
https://wordpress.org/support/article/how-to-install-wordpress/ [wordpress.org]
php is pretty much ready out of the box. I get into the fiddly bits, well, because that's my bent. And because in days of yore you had to (default configurations were pretty useless).
Same goes for mysql, which is pretty trivial setup- just need a root user and password, maybe can tune a couple of things in my.cnf.
I strongly recommend phpmyadmin for mysql admin. It's super powerful. It's a webpage interface. I do a symlink (logged in ssh) when I want to use it, then just delete the link when I'm done so noone else even ever sees it.
Besides letting you browse, edit, delete, etc., databases, tables, rows, etc., it looks into the internal variables and parameters and helps you tune mysql - gives detailed suggestions and links to mysql's documentation online.
I never used AOLpress. Now you have me curious.
About 10 years ago I did some work for someone and they required I use the then latest MS Word version (ugh) which had the "ribbon" interface (ugh), and DreamWeaver. Ugh again. I ended up fixing html after DreamWeaver shat out the pages.
What I really hated: DreamWeaver had me select which browser to optimize for. What? How about strict standard html? Okay, I understand that there's no standard- html API is being changed daily, and different browsers interpret and render differently. Sigh.
Bottom line: If you've ever successfully set up an Apache configuration (that works online), the rest of WordPress setup is truly trivial.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Reziac on Sunday June 26 2022, @05:25AM (2 children)
You are in luck! you can satisfy your curiosity here:
Installer (32bit version):
http://doomgold.com/pcstuff/aolpress/AOLP20_3.EXE [doomgold.com]
User Guide (which I've never more than glanced at)
http://doomgold.com/pcstuff/aolpress/aolpress2.pdf [doomgold.com]
There's also a 16bit version, should you have truly ancient requirements. And a Mac version of similar vintage.
It's quirky (frex, keystrokes for bold etc. are nonstandard), will occasionally crash (but never mungs a file), and so old it don't know no mousewheel, and I keep looking for something less antique, but when I need to get real work done, there I am again. Fortunately, my needs seldom exceed its capabilities. And it makes scrupulously clean and tidy HTML (and mostly ignores what it doesn't understand, rather than nuking it like Frontpage does... albeit usefully).
Dreamweaver is what you inflict on your worst enemies. Or if they weren't your enemies, they soon will be!!
Installing Wordpress from scratch, and getting familiar with the admin stuff, is probably the way to go. But for most people, the installer is a button on their web hosting's control panel, and then there's an option to "enable PHP" and what do you mean it's a separate admin page?? ....and as the various body parts get auto-updated, perhaps something eventually gets out of sync, and that might explain why themes turn into brawls and stuff gets hosed.
A site where I'm staff had a full-on PHP setup that had body parts get out of sync that way, and finally lost critical function... it's been replaced with as close to automated (Wordpress as part of it) as the site owner could come up with. Hopefully it'll stay functional this time.
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Sunday June 26 2022, @09:40PM (1 child)
You crack me up. Luck? If I ever need such a thing, I'll consider it as being a ladder to get out of a hole I've fallen into. I just have to remember to stop putting weight on that broken ankle. Ouch!!
But seriously thanks. Now I wanna fire up a very old Win98SE machine. Then maybe Win3.1.
I've never trusted WordPress to auto-update, nor do I trust it with ftp or any other credentials. I log in to the admin panel ("dashboard") on the sites, available updates are listed, and I manually download (copy-paste link into putty session, 'wget' [right-click to paste], enter.) Then I have some simple scripts that delete the old themes / plugins and copy in the new ones. Pretty simple. There are not a lot of hosted sites. If we had that problem, I'd use one of the many fine 'automation' thingies. There may be 20 or so total plugins and themes in use.
Wow, messy sounding problem with the php setup thing. Not sure how I feel about that. Could be cool, could be messy. If it partially uses WordPress, hopefully the WordPress stuff can be updated without breaking everything (why do I doubt it can be done painlessly...)
(Score: 2) by Reziac on Sunday June 26 2022, @10:22PM
Now, don't complain I never gave you anything. :D And it runs just fine on XP. :P
Lot of the problem with the late and unlamented PHP setup is it was all custom, and every PHP update progressively broke something, and the programmer was not as good as he liked to think, and reacted to breakage by becoming unavailable, and while we've got a couple of good database guys, we didn't have another web coder, and the breakage broke the store and killed the finances too. Was better to just ditch and replace the whole durn thing with off-the-shelf solutions.
That sounds like good update policy. You're hired! :)
And there is no Alkibiades to come back and save us from ourselves.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 25 2022, @09:51PM (1 child)
Drupal, while powerful is only as complicated as the number of modules you enable from core or community modules you download. Themes are readily available to customize your look easily. Instead of a database server, you can use SQLite as the backend. Can be installed and updated from CLI with the helpful tool, "drush". Any updates are available via one command, "drush up[date]" and can be automated if desirable.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2022, @07:40PM
drupal is insecure and lame as hell.
(Score: 4, Funny) by r1348 on Saturday June 25 2022, @10:46PM
Every single Youtuber is telling me that Squarespace is what you're looking for!
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Martini_block on Saturday June 25 2022, @11:28PM
I have used Bluefish [sourceforge.net]. Just a suggestion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2022, @12:14AM
Static site with just about any input format you might want converted to html via pandoc?
Add
watera simple shell script wrapper and, instant site generator. You can have your wrapper script generate an index file for Lunr to easily add search to your site, even for a static site (I've used lunr on a site with 10s of thousands of pages and it worked well, with the index file sent to the clients pretty small considering).Or, if you like some feature of an existing site generator like Hugo, but don't like the input format, wrap pandoc and hugo to convert from what you like to an input format your site generator works with (either markdown or html for hugo), and feed that to your site generator.
From the pandoc docs:
https://pandoc.org/ [pandoc.org]
https://lunrjs.com/ [lunrjs.com]
(Score: 5, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2022, @01:31AM
The requirements were a bit vague but have you considered slashcode? It's good enough for this site after all.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by bart9h on Sunday June 26 2022, @02:12AM
I too have considered a number of options, and in the end opted to write plain HTML5. Modern HTML has all you need to create responsive websites that adapt to big and small screens.
If the site needs to be dynamic, I use "good" old PHP.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2022, @04:02AM
Add domain, use markup or Jekyll (I use plain html) and voila. Https cert automatic. Drawback, it takes a couple minutes for the server to pick changes up, and big files are better hosted elsewhere. I simply send to a rumble page for video. Keep backups using git clone and pull because the platform is gates'
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2022, @04:56AM
They seem to adhere to the Unix philosophy: Do one thing and do it well.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday June 26 2022, @07:51AM
Do you mean a super simple web server? How about redbean ( https://redbean.dev [redbean.dev] )
Which is a single-file distributable web server.
Runs on any x86-64 operating system.
Includes a lua interpreter (which is also very lightweight). And can serve a variety of files.
You can extend the server-side with lua scripts also - which gives you abilities like php, except without needing php/mysql etc.
Lua just keeps its data in plain text tables. Nice and simple.
That's the 'server software' part done. What you put on there is up to you.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Appalbarry on Sunday June 26 2022, @08:08AM (2 children)
Great suggestions in here. Right now I'm giving WonderCMS [wondercms.com] a spin, and it seems to be just what we need. I'll be looking at a couple of others including https://gohugo.io/ [gohugo.io] .
Comments: one goal is to have a nice online front-end that allows small updates every couple of months. Something genuinely simple and obvious that doesn't involve going "Oh right, how did this work last time?"
I've been doing this stuff for decades, and I'm honestly tired of bad interfaces or overly complex UI designs. My partner has done significantly less, and has even less patience for such things. Updating a web page should be fast and easy.
I've used Wordpress since it was the new cool thing, and honestly have been more and more dissatisfied with it with every release. On one hand it tries way too hard to be everything to everyone, and on the other it's too limited for really big projects. It feels far too cluttered for my tastes, and for these small projects is about 95% redundant. Plus every Wordpress website on the planet looks so much like a Wordpress website unless you have hours to troll through themes or design it from the ground up yourself.
I too have use Squarespace and Wix in the past, and dear god never again. Overpriced, constrained, and the lock-in is severe.
FWIW I was a Dreamweaver ace back in the day, and utterly despised Frontpage.... now I can't imagine buying either Adobe or Microsoft products again.
What is "simple?" In this context we want to make changes to pages through an on-line page; as close to an average word-processor as possible in terms of user experience. Less is more. What I like about Wonder CMS is that you go to an obfuscated log-in address, enter a password, and bang, you're in edit mode. And for what are decidedly non-critical sites with no real user info of any sort we do not want to get strangled with 2FA , pictures of busses, and similar idiocy. For banking that might (and even then one could argue...) make sense, but for a five page website, not so. Simple also means not being bothered with with uploading pages to and from the site. I do not miss FTP. For these little projects I'll also argue that using a database backend is overkill.
I did in fact play with slashcode about the time that this site was created. And quickly ruled it out.... :)
I fully understand that if you use Wordpress, or Drupal, or even write HTML in notepad ever day, that all of these are "simple". I'm looking for a solution that's "simple" for someone who does none of those things, and who uses an Apple computer as well. (Dear God, don't send me Apple specific suggestions!) If she can't open the web page and edit it immediately without guesswork then it's not what she - or me for that matter - needs or wants.
In any event we've now got some great suggestions! Thank you!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by dx3bydt3 on Sunday June 26 2022, @12:42PM (1 child)
Another option, if a wiki style site is acceptable is DokuWiki. It is very easy to administer and edit: DokuWiki [dokuwiki.org].
"DokuWiki is a simple to use and highly versatile Open Source wiki software that doesn't require a database."
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 27 2022, @04:11AM
Fixed that for them.
Seriously though, I was wondering how they managed to pull that off without using any database. There are different things that could mean depending on what definition was assigned to "database." For those curious like I was, they use an indexed, hierarchical file setup for data and a flat-file database for authentication by default.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by borfast on Sunday June 26 2022, @03:13PM
Assuming what you want is a simple static site, with no need for databases or server-side processing, my suggestion is Hugo: https://gohugo.io/ [gohugo.io]
Whatever you do, stay away from React, Vue or the other fancy frameworks the entire world think they need (spoiler: they don't, unless they're Facebook or some gigantic company). For some reason, these libraries/frameworks made their way even into what should be the simplest scenario on the web today: the static website. For some reason, some people think they should use React to build a static website. It's absurd. Anyway, enough ranting. Just save yourself a ton of time and headaches and don't fall into that trap.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 27 2022, @12:39AM
This one might suit too - although it may not meet the "non-technical" requirement depending on how non-technical your users are.
https://0cms.henley.id.au/ [henley.id.au]