Wanted: A suitable CMS for a GAA club

stepbar

Folks,

Looking for a bit of advice here. I'm more than likely going to be asked to take over the running of the Gaa club website soon. The current website needs to be dumped (for the want of a better word).

I have a few idead but my first objective would be to get a scalable website up and running. I really want to encourage number of club members to get involved (I don't want this website taking over my life!): - i.e encourage parents / juvenile managers / even players to get involved and post content. Of course I'm going to need a CMS capable of allowing these people add content with the correct permissions etc (no server side stuff).

To communicate with players and supporters alike, we use a text messsaging service (not integrated with the existing website). I would like to get a service intergrated into the website, as last year the service cost the club 700eur! Any suggestions?

We also run a club lotto and I would like to get this up and running on the web again. We use a site called "local lotto" and it's probably suitable for what we need it for. Again I would like to intergrate it to look like our solution. Any one with experience of this? Later on in the year I may want to setup a club shop to sell jerseys and club hoodies and the like, however I'm more concerned with getting the lotto and perhaps a major club draw here and there running from the website.

Finally, I would prefer if the solution was free and easy to setup and understand. Even though I have a computer background, I've never developed a website before. If anyone would like to offer their services I'm all ears (perhaps would suit a final year student as a project?). Most of all I want this site to be an asset for the club and community, so it has to be the best.

Lots of advice needed. Cheers folks.

Dr.Silly

Hi,

Have you had a look at www.league.ie ?

stepbar

I'd be embarrased to have that as a club website truth be told. At 250 p.a it's a rip off.

Dr.Silly

http://www.wdsl.league.ie/

? not the type of thing you're looking for ?

stepbar

Not interested.

- Must be Free
- Can code myself
- Have a domain name and hosting.

I DONT WANT TO HEAR FROM ANY OTHER COMPANY PIMPING THEIR WEARS UNLESS YOU'RE GOING TO OFFER IT FOR FREE.

Anyone else?

Dr.Silly

stepbar wrote: »

I DONT WANT TO HEAR FROM ANY OTHER COMPANY PIMPING THEIR WEARS UNLESS YOU'RE GOING TO OFFER IT FOR FREE.

What's with the attitude ?
I'm certainly not "pimping" as you phrase it, I was trying to offer some help.

You say you can code, but your initial post was..

"Even though I have a computer background, I've never developed a website before. If anyone would like to offer their services I'm all ears"

Sparks

Thread reopened and commercial shilling from league.ie removed and the user involved sitebanned. Folks, if you are going to promote a commercial product that you are commercially involved with, it is not cool to do so in here unofficially. PM the mods if you're thinking along those lines please.

theone

I did a gaa website early last year http://cnp.ie/ it was the first time i developed a website so it's a bit rough round the edges.

I used joomla because the ui of it is a bit like microsoft word,I had the same lofty ideals as yourself I wanted a collaborative effort from everybody but you'll be surprised with the lack of interest/help you encounter,not sure if it's just my experience but i wouldn't touch it with a bargepole tbh,it's not really worth the hassle.It was in a bit of mess before i went near it.

Every question you have i can answer.I only wish I knew what i was taking on beforehand.You end up doing allot more than a website.

stepbar

Thanks theone. I could code it myself but i dont have a limitless amount of time on my hands. I've done a bit of research and yep joomia is a good cms and one i could understand. I suppose im looking for a good template to work from. It would save time at least. In an ideal world i'd love to be able to pay someone or have a student take it on as a final year project. I'd like to think i could help with the technical bits as well. Hear ya when you say i could be on my own at this project.

TrueDub

stepbar wrote: »

Thanks theone. I could code it myself but i dont have a limitless amount of time on my hands. I've done a bit of research and yep joomia is a good cms and one i could understand. I suppose im looking for a good template to work from. It would save time at least. In an ideal world i'd love to be able to pay someone or have a student take it on as a final year project. I'd like to think i could help with the technical bits as well. Hear ya when you say i could be on my own at this project.

I use Joomla for a number of sites I run for clubs & voluntary organisations. If you do a Google search for "Free Joomla template" you'll get sites absolutely chock-full of them.

I'd suggest you do the following:

• Go to the Joomla website and download the Absolute Beginners' Guide, and follow it. Even if you're not an absolute beginner, it will show you the basics of getting an offline site working, which you can mess around with to your heart's content.
• Get all the templates you want, and try them all
• When you're happy, pick one and implement your site

Also, there's tons of documentation out there about admin-ing a site using Joomla.

PMax110

stepbar I am in the same situation yourself and am hoping to do a top job for the club. I have a background in web and online marketing so planning to manage the design and build of the site but outsource the actual development to a web dev company in India... will be specifying joomla or drupal CMS!

Quick question, does anybody know of a really top class site which has been developed for a GAA or local soccer club in Ireland, I haven't been able to find even one that I would consider professional. Would love to see who has the best solution at the moment?

Anyone? (Feel free to use this as an opportunity to plug your own clubs site)

Sparks

TBH, I think a lot of people are using Joomla or Drupal or another CMS when something like Wordpress might be better suited. You'd want to know exactly what it was that WP didn't do that you needed done before you'd have a good reason to deploy Joomla or Drupal really. They can do a lot more, but they are also a step up in workload and complexity.

stepbar

PMax110 wrote: »

stepbar I am in the same situation yourself and am hoping to do a top job for the club. I have a background in web and online marketing so planning to manage the design and build of the site but outsource the actual development to a web dev company in India... will be specifying joomla or drupal CMS!

Quick question, does anybody know of a really top class site which has been developed for a GAA or local soccer club in Ireland, I haven't been able to find even one that I would consider professional. Would love to see who has the best solution at the moment?

Anyone? (Feel free to use this as an opportunity to plug your own clubs site)

You might let me know how you progress with this as I'm still looking for someone to do a job for me (In joomla).

stepbar

Sparks wrote: »

TBH, I think a lot of people are using Joomla or Drupal or another CMS when something like Wordpress might be better suited. You'd want to know exactly what it was that WP didn't do that you needed done before you'd have a good reason to deploy Joomla or Drupal really. They can do a lot more, but they are also a step up in workload and complexity.

Get what you're saying but wordpress is not what I'm looking for. WP is quite limited and TBH when I think of WP, blog comes to mind..... There is a lot of extentions that Joolia can provide that WP doesn't even provide.

TheWaterboy

I have the basis of our club website up...fairly static at the moment but am going to implement Joomla or Drupal into ASAP so others can update it...

www.rathnuregaa.ie

daymobrew

For multiple author access CMS Made Simple could work.
You would create the site pages and add the appropriate authors as Additional Editors for the pages you want them to be able to edit.
The template system is very easy to use.

bullpost

Sparks wrote: »

TBH, I think a lot of people are using Joomla or Drupal or another CMS when something like Wordpress might be better suited. You'd want to know exactly what it was that WP didn't do that you needed done before you'd have a good reason to deploy Joomla or Drupal really. They can do a lot more, but they are also a step up in workload and complexity.

Agree totally. Wordpress has some powerful plugins to make adding content for non-technical users easy and integration options with other useful apps. such as flickr and googlemail and google calendar. In combination these could be used as building blocks for a very dynamic, powerful site for a low cost of entry in terms of technical skills. I did some prototyping of such an app. to be used as the basis of a school website and its power was impressive.

Heres an example - rugby team:
http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/rugby/

daymobrew

stepbar wrote: »

Get what you're saying but wordpress is not what I'm looking for. WP is quite limited and TBH when I think of WP, blog comes to mind..... There is a lot of extentions that Joolia can provide that WP doesn't even provide.

You said:

Finally, I would prefer if the solution was free and easy to setup and understand. Even though I have a computer background, I've never developed a website before.

WordPress is free, easy to setup and understand - IMO Joomla isn't easy to understand.

WordPress can be used as a non-blog site - I've done it a few times.
Basically, don't dismiss it because you associate it with blogs.

nellyshark

Im pretty sure kerry gaa use joomla as their website

ocallagh

Wordpress is good for small to medium sized content management systems with a few authors. Setup and deployment is simple and it is very fast. I wouldn't recommend in this instance.

Drupal is good for large complex content management systems that require various levels of access control and custom functionality. You would need to be a proficient PHP developer to setup a drupal site properly. It has good caching support and can be tweaked to run very fast.

Joomla is not as flexible as Drupal. It is miles ahead in terms of e-commerce support though and setup is fairly easy. It definitely has speed and resource issues.

All three have a great library of modules available to them. I'd probably go with Joomla if I were you although if you had a decent programmer and a bit of a budget I'd recommend Drupal

rossc007

www.cushyCMS.com is pretty easy to use, very simple to integrate.

If your willing to pay a couple of quid then Adobe contribute is really nice imo. I think integrating Joomla just for the sake of CMS is overkill, just my 2 cents

regards
Ross

El Hamos

Hi Stepbar,

If time is limited and you want a simple to setup,understand and update information sharing site, WordPress is hard to beat.
CushyCMS or something like Pagelime are good online solutions but Wordpress has a bigger online community. My personal perference is ModX http://modxcms.com/ as it will allows you more control over the look and feel of your site, but it will take slightly longer to get up and running.
Ross is right in saying Joomla is overkill (and ugly) and Drupal is ugly as hell but allows the programmer more license than any other popular CMS.

Trojan

I've seen some good sports club themes for Wordpress, that'd be my first port of call. Some of them are paid, but less than $100, definitely worth investing in if you find the right one.