building a small business site

Hello,

I am going to try my hand at building a small business website. One of the main features of the website is I would like the end-user to be able to log on to a secure section of the site and be able to update the site with new items themselves.

I believe from preliminary research I would need to build a database and form for this..? but thought it would be a good idea to ask for a point in the right direction, in terms of which language would be best suited, programmes, any templates or resource and any advice you could send my way would be much appciated.

Thanks Si

There are business templates available via some hosting companies.

Ok,

first question you need to ask yourself, are you going to code this yourself?
Do you have the expertise? because if the question is no, then I would suggest downloading a pre-made cms (Content Management System), once installed, you can create your template around this, and then have a backend that you can log into, and then add items whenever you chose in the admin area.

What would you be adding to this website? because that could be a factor in which CMS you could use. But here is a list of all the best CMS out there, one could be right for you.

http://www.opensourcecms.com/

The above link lets you test out many CMS so going on that and give it a try, to see if any of them are the way forward

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Hey,

when I was reading thought some other threads I came across this one.

http://www.webforumz.com/website-pla...source-cms.htm

which lead me to the same link as above and you are right the online CMS test are very helpful. I'm currently going to give "Drupal" ago and see how I go.

Thanks for all your replies. Si

I wouldn't go with Drupal if your not a coder. Its a pre made CMS but it assumes a fair bit of code savvy from your end.

Joomla is made more for your purposes. There is a learning curve with the backend but its well worth it.
Add to Joomla the 'sobi2' component and you have a full online shop with several payment methods. You can add to that another component called 'Community Builder' and your members have extensive profiles linked to their shop accounts. Job done. All for free. (Except for maybe a few headaches, tantrums and other general unpleasant moments of near madness you WILL encounter in building the final product.)

Its all good but seriously - don't expect a walk in the park whatever system you use.

Good luck.

Drupal is also difficult to update.

Joomla is your best option.

ok well thanks for the advise guys. I'll give Joomla ago. I'm not trying to build a ecommerce site, just something where different items can be added and deleted by the end user. e.g. a "chair" with short description and image.



Thanks.