Best web hosting/CMS for my non-technical friend

Question

I have a friend who knows nothing about programming or design who runs a small business. She has an ancient web site built in 1997 that has slowly been modified over the years using MS Word until it has become all but unmanageable. It is only a few static pages with a lot of images and links that change on a semi-regular basis, but I don't have time to build it for her, and I certainly don't want to make changes for her later.

So my question is, what is the best option for her available? What is the best combination of hosting and CMS available. Ideally, she should never have to write code, edit code, use ftp, or deal with complicated installations.

Answer 1

get her a wiki, and just lock out editing by everyone but her

[or you could hire a professional to provider her a custom solution]

Answer 2

A friend of mine swears by Xoops and has set it up for at least three of his friends who are all very much non-technical. I've used it and its a little too simple for my tastes, but I can definitely see the appeal for a non-technical person.

Answer 3

http://www.dotnetnuke.com/

A great open source .NET based CMS with lots of modules. Lots of host providers offer it.

Answer 4

May be awardspace.com

Answer 5

If it's only a few pages and she's not overly particular about the style (or at least is willing to pick from a wide array of available themes) then I would suggest wordpress.com.

Create a few WordPress Pages with the appropriate content and set the front page (on the Settings|Reading admin "tab") to display one of them and she'll be good to go. Include a WYSIWYG editor and all. Free, to boot.

Answer 6

Check out Sitefinity. Very easy to use and has a free community edition for one user. Also comes with built-in site templates.

Answer 7

I can recommend you Joomla, Drupal or SimpleCMS. For hosting I stand for Hostgator.com

The owner of the site do not need to know HTML, CSS.

Answer 8

ive tried pretty much every common LAMP cms and the one thats most usable and requires no coding skills (once its set up) is expression engine. do not underestimate the importance of usability, drupal fails miserably in this aspect.

to get up and running instantly, wordpress is hard to beat