REALLY Simple Website--How Basic Can You Go?

Question

Although I've done programming, I'm not a programmer. I've recently agreed to coordinate getting a Website up for a club. The resources are--me, who has done Web content maintenance (putting content into HTML and ColdFusion templates via a gatekeeper to the site itself; doing simple HTML and XML coding); a serious Web developer who does database programming, ColdFusion, etc., and talks way over the heads of the rest of us; two designers who use Dreamweaver; the guy who created the original (and now badly broken) site in Front Page and wants to use Expression Web; and assorted other club members who are even less technically inclined.

What we need up first is some text and graphics (a gorgeous design has been created in Dreamweaver), some links (including to existing PDF newsletters for download), and maybe hooking up an existing Blogspot blog. Later (or earlier if it's not hard), we may add mouseover menus to the links, a gallery, a calendar, a few Mapquest hotlinks, and so on.

My question--First, is there any real problem with sticking with HTML and jpegs for the initial site? Second, for the "later" part of the site development, what's the simplest we can go with? Third, are there costs in doing this the simple way that will make us regret it down the road? Also, is there a good site/resource where I can learn more about this from a newbie perspective? ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­

Answer 1

If you don't require any dynamic content, heck, if you don't plan on editing the content more than once a week, I'd say stick to basic HTML.

Later, you'd probably want a basic, no-fuss and easily installable CMS. The brand really depends on the platform (most likely PHP/Rails/ASP), but most of them can be found by typing " CMS" into Google. Try prefixing it with "free" or "open source" if you want.

I'm pretty sure you can do all this for absolutely free. Most PHP and Ruby CMS's are free and web hosting is free/extremely cheap if you're not demanding.

And last/best tip: Find someone who has done this before, preferably more than once. He'll probably set you up so you never have to look at anything more complicated than a WYSIWYG editor.