I am newsletter editor for the Chicago Chapter NRHS. I am looking for someone to design a new web site for us. I like the web sites the steam groups (such as 4449, 765, etc.) have and would like a site for our group that is visually pleasing, but easy to maintain. Like all NRHS Chapters our budget is somewhat limited.

If interested, or if you can suggest anyone, please let me know.

Thanks.

Chris Jacks.

Chris, try http://www.icatcherwebdesign.com/

they are narrow gauge modellers, and love anything railroad. Tell them a mafia member sent you, he'll know.

You could contact Loren Karr. He does the websites for Boone and Scenic Valley as well as Hub City Heritage Museum in Oelwein IA.

http://www.lorenkarrmedia.com/

I kin of feel a little silly posting something like this, but I work as a programmer and tech support for:

http://www.jumpwebspot.com/

Cool thing about it is that the sites are really easy to change and have an e-newsletter function, so you don't have to buy that extra somewhere else. You don't even have to have any special tools or know HTML, and although I'm not much of a sales guy, I know that we regularly beat other web designers' prices. Anyway, if you give Donna a call at (616) 340-7625, she can help you out.

Chris,

I highly recommend that you choose a developer who will build your site using an easy-to-update editorial tool like WordPress.

In face, this is common advice for all museums.

Tools such as WordPress are cheap (my WordPress sites cost $125 a year including hosting and email service) and they let the editor(s) post content (phots, text, video, what have you) without having to know how to code a web page.

They also have a community of developers that make "plug ins" which you can use essentially for free to upgrades to your functionality.

They also support all the Web 2.0 functions that you need to make your content shareable (post on Facebook, Digg, etc...) as well as commenting.

By the nature of the tool, your content can be easily optimized for search as well.

All these things are essential for a site these days, and simple tools are out there to make it cheap and (relatively) easy.

Have fun with it!

Rob

Two words: simple and effective. Avoid annoying flashing and vibrating imagery reminiscent of Romanian porn popups, and anything that takes more than 15 seconds to download on a 56K dialup.

dave

Romanian porn pop-ups? Where are you surfing Dave? I may need the URLs for research! LOL!

Seriously, the days of designing for the 56K modem are history (sorry dial-up ers). If you want to design for anything slow, make it a smart phone.

Rob

And Wordpress comes in several flavors, most of which are free.

#1 blogging software your webmaster installs on your website, and then you can add entries yourself without your webmaster's help. Free but your webmaster has to do software maintenance. http://www.wordpress.org/

#2 Blog hosting, where it's only a blog not a website, but they do maintenance for you. http://www.wordpress.com/ This also has social-networking features, like "group blogs" that any of a group can add to. Free, except they put ads on your blog.

#3 Premium blog hosting with upcharges for your own domain name and extra storage space, and no ads, but still, mainly just a blog. http://www.wordpress.com/

#4 Third party web hosting sites, which may offer any combination of services ranging from normal web hosting, email, etc.to a variety of content management software including wiki's, forums, or blogging software including wordpress (in the form of #1 above). Price, highly variable but $10/month is common.

All of the above is just for software. To do actual content authoring (i.e. webmastering), you'll have to pay a human or do it yourself with tools like Dreamweaver, GoLive, FrontPage, iWeb, etc. (you have to get used to capital letters in the middle of words, *laugh*!)

The other thing about blogs is comments. Comments are a nuisance to administer for two reasons. First an ugly phenomenon known as blog comment spam http://www.clientwell.com/blog/2007/08/23/blog-spam/ where you may find yourself needing to moderate 10,000 comments. Second you need to know this: Behind a keyboard, a surprising number of people will shoot their mouths off and say things they'd *never* say in person. When things get heated, this can rapidly snowball into vile acrimony, which absolutely will cost you volunteers and allies, and certainly should not be presented to the public. But if you "censor" them you are equally damned. Sometimes the best answer is "don't have comments".

As Dave Barry would say: "Romanian porn pop-ups" would make a really good name for a rock and roll band. :-)

You can upload the WordPress software (fairly easy) to a 1and1.com "Beginner" webhosting package for only $3.99/month. The above applies that you will have to maintain the site yourself. However WordPress is pretty easy to use and there are lots of tutorials and thousands of free themes. If you modify one of basic themes by changing the masthead pic to something "railroady" you could have something basic up in a short amount of time.

Well, not to toot my own horn, but this is what I do for a living...

http://www.apheus.com

I've been doing freelance web design for five years now, and lately (thanks in part to waiting a month for my Adobe Creative Suite 4 to get here) I've become quite the fan of the simple elegance and smooth layouts offered by WordPress and iWeb. It might not be as original as something made from scratch or in DreamWeaver, but far less time consuming, and for most needs it should more than fit the bill. I've just been in the process of moving the Pacific Coast Railroad over to WordPress from our old crew-maintained Blogger site; finances for PR stuff have been tight (not to mention it's only needed so much given such an erratic operating schedule), and until we get the go-ahead from brass for a full-blown site with our own domain, hosting, etc. I think it suits the operation quite well. The ease of editing and ability for even the biggest neophytes to edit content is also a huge plus. Look on the WordPress site and you'll see some pretty big names and attractions using their interface. Sure, it might look a wee bit "manufactured," but with a dash of originality you can spice it up quite a bit.

Good luck!

http://pcrailroad.wordpress.com

If you're looking at doing e-mail newsletters, many places that I know of that have done it have had to pay outside services to do their newsletter sending (there are laws here in the U.S. governing how you send bulk e-mail). It's not usually included in the super-ultra-cheap hosting packages (the company I work for includes it, but we're the exception to the rule). So in the long run, if you plan on doing that sort of thing, you want to explore a few different options. It all kind of depends on your needs.