Which editor would you give your mom to let her edit her own website?

Question

I mean this quite literally. A close relative wants to create her own website for her business and asked me for help. I've offered her to set up the website, take care of domain registration and all, but I don't have the time to design the website for her. So, I want to give her a software in which she can edit the page and publish it on her own.

My feature-wish-list. The software should

• of course, be easy-to-use, as she's not a pro at the computer
• be able to publish the website, once the ftp-connection has been entered
• have some predefined themes, but also the possibilites to define a custom theme
• offer a german UI, since she doesn't understand english

I so far looked at Nvu (too complicated), zeta Producer (crashed even before I could start editing the first page), CityDesk (very promising, but still too complicated and not in german). I'm quite happy with Namu6, but unfortunately, it is english only.

I'd be happy for any suggestion.

[edit]

Some were asking for a platform: She is only using windows, so Mac or Linux is not an option.

Answer 1

Google has a webpage service, besides Blogger, I think it' called Pages. Or if she has a Mac iLife has a decent tool set for the average non technical user

Answer 2

I was happy with citydesk for imachines.com, but lately I've moved towards just suggesting a blogging tool and doing it that way (e.g. wordpress, blogger, etc...). Websites are complicated because they are a 'web'. I'm not sure my mom could ever do it.

Answer 3

You don't mention which platform. If Mac is a possibility, take a look at iWeb, part of the iLife suite.

Answer 4

Consider setting up a CMS for her and let her edit the pages in the browser.

Answer 5

Chances are, non-technical people will struggle with any editor. I mean, how do you expect her to do layout?? How do you expect her to edit the templates? How do you expect her to publish the site from her local machine to the server that's hosting the website?

Come on man, I know these things seem common sense to us, but really, every non-techy person around me that I can think of wouldn't have the least clue about where to begin with any of this, even my sister who knows how to use photoshop wouldn't have a clue about running a website. (I'd have to spend a lot of time tutoring her, and even then I'm not sure she'd get it).

Just give her a CMS or a blogging application like wordpress or the like (I assume you'll have to set it up for her).

EDIT

Even if you do find a good-easy-friendly editor, what about deploying her changes to the server? The problem is not only editing HTML, but running a website, managing content on it.

Answer 6

if she isn't a geek, maybe a simple cms is sufficient for her. editing html, and layout stuff can be pretty painful, as well as managing files on a server for the average user. i'd go for wordpress, which has simple admin ui, and since it's php, can be run on almost every hosting service you find. Also, using a widget-based sidebar and page layout makes her able to do almost anything she could do with an html editor (of which, imo dreamweaver is by far the best) - and even more! just think about already done plugins available through a simple plugin manager! i think there is a german translation available, too. (i found a hungarian one, there must be a german as well)

Answer 7

My mom uses vi for this

Answer 8

WordPress could be a good option and it has some options to install in German and other languages. See WordPress in Your Language for more information.

Answer 9

Depends on what she needs the site for and what you are capable of setting up for her. Google sites are free and easy to set up/use, but they're damn ugly.

Set up a free Blogger or WordPress account or run a hosted WordPress installation.

Engines like Joomla tend to be a bit technical on the admin back-end, but are also easy to edit from a front end editor's point of view - their WYSIWYG editor allows you to edit content from the front end, which I've found useful for non-technical types.

Answer 10

If your mother's business is a legitimate business that she gets her living from, wouldn't she want a professional to do it? A non-professional website, like hers is BOUND to look, is only going to make her business seem unprofessional.

If it is not a "real" business, but more like a hobby business, perhaps she would get what she needs from www.blogspot.com [or Wordpress], which is very simple to use.

Answer 11

I've tried this a few times with non-technical folks. For those that can handle desktop software, I use RapidWeaver (OS X only). (I don't set up non-technical folks with Windows PCs.)

But more often, I've found that something like WordPress works better. They can easily edit the site online and it's limited functionality keeps them from getting confused.

Answer 12

What about an online web site creator, something like GoDaddy's Website Tonight? It provides templates and lots of support for a simple web site. There is a monthly fee, but it's quite reasonable, and could be a good solution for someone who doesn't want to delve into the complexities.

I don't know if they offer a German UI, but it might be worth checking out.

Answer 13

Dot Net Nuke, just copy, install and a way she goes.....

Answer 14

Wordpress is actually a nice and capable basic CMS system that just happens to have a blogging engine built into it.

Answer 15

Have you tried http://goodbarry.com ?

It’s an easy to use CMS focused to business owners.

As hasen j said: “The problem is not only editing HTML, but running a website, managing content on it.”

However I’m not sure if there is a German translation.

Answer 16

Movable Type is another option for a simple CMS.

My mother is using TextMate. I set her up with Subversion, so to publish her site she just commits and a hook on the Subversion server will update the site. The big benefit here is that when something goes wrong I have a record of every change she made which makes it much easier to sort out. There's some simple PHP (that was what was easily supported on her MacBook for testing and on the webhost she uses) to minimize the boilerplate stuff on each page.

Answer 17

CushyCMS is the only thing I would let a totally non-tech person near. It's very easy to setup an manage, and there's very little chance she can actually break stuff.