I have a friend with a travel-related business (sort of a B&B) who wants a simple, but professional-looking website- lots of photos and text, but nothing terribly fancy in the way of special effects or links.

She's not very techno-savvy (about like me) and may actually hire someone to create the website, but she will have to be able to update it periodically herself.

Currently she has a PC with Windows XP, but she's considering buying a Mac, because she's been convinced that Mac software is better suited for website design and maintenance.

She's never used a Mac.

Do you think she's been advised correctly? Is the software included in the standard Mac package so superior that it's worth the money, especially considering the learning curve in switching from Windows?

If not, what software for her PC should she be looking at?

If you don't know anything about web design / technology ... a Mac really isn't going to make you a whiz with no effort.

Has she looked at using something like a google hosted site and using their WYSIWYG editors?

Once you say you want something professional, and if you're serious about professional, that means that you don't do it yourself. You buy a professional template done already for you, or you pay someone else to do it for you.

Does she want something like http://www.letseat.at/ (which is for restaurants); where it is just a simple but professional look?

You know, I'm not sure what she wants. For some reason she wants to avoid Google.

I think she may hire someone to design the website, and just plans to do the updating herself.

If it's a simple website, which it probably would be based on the fact she has no experience with websites, packages like dreamweaver would work. She doesn't need a mac.

She would need to work with the designer so they do not design something too complicated for her to update.

Jumping into a local adult ed class on websites may save her many many hours of trial and error.

But I'm also of the camp if you have never done it before, and it's your business, then hire it all out, including the updates.

Joomla is a free, open source and very powerful CMS (Content Management System). You need webspace which supports PHP and gives you a SQL database. Most and even cheap packages from webhosters offer this.

The beauty of the system is that as soon it is installed and the website is designed it is very easy to upload new content via a webbrowser. So it is platform inddependent.

You can find Joomla here Joomla Website

If the designer she uses has a template edited for her site, she could just use Adobe Contribute to modify the template, not even having to use the harder to learn Dreamweaver... simpler on her end and lots cheaper then buying a MAC...

Tired of everyone out there saying Mac this, Mac that... software exists on both platforms that works the same... no need for the extra hardware cost of a MAC over a Windows based system...

I don't disagree with you.

Depending upon what data she wants, she could have the items for the website stored in a database. The designer could make a simple front end for the database for her to manage items.

Hi,

As mentioned above, (I think) she needs a CMS with a hosted service on some ISP. The web designer can design and setup the "look and feel" and then she can use a broweser based GUI to manage the content (text and photos).

If she has a domain already, it's possible that her current ISP/hosting company has a CMS in place. Keeping it all browser based means you're not tied to a OS or particular software.

I'm looking at www.drupal.org as a CMS for a community project I'm going to be involved in the fall.

Aidan