Building/Refitting a Non-profit ORG website

[cothebadger]

Hey all,

I've taken on the task of remodeling or completely overhauling the website of my campus' chapter of Habitat for Humanity (http://www.uwhabitat.org). We're hoping to make it a little more appealing to the eye and to present more important information on the front page, rather than more trivial things like minutes.

The site is hosted at HostingMatters with very little storage space and poor email support (lots of emails get delivered hours to days late.) I'm at the crossroads of whether I should move everything to a new host and rebuild or try to change the front end on this site while maintaining it's server side support.

My knowledge of web design is self-taught HTML/CSS, and I continue to learn more daily. I plan on teaching myself some PHP, Javascript and other useful languages, but obviously, a lot of the necessary technology is complicated and too tough to build from scratch on my own.

Any recommendations? Are there any good books or web resources for such an undertaking?

[cothebadger]

I just found a little info on Drupal. Any thoughts?

[Compguy Pete]

Are you looking for info on moving the site or the redesign? I'll see if I can help on both fronts...

Hosting:
If the current host isn't meeting your needes then YES by all means move it. the issue of a good host has come up several times here and I've made a couple of posts on who I recommend, so perhaps do a search of this site on that issue... Moving is very easy especially considering your looking at launching a new site.

The "new" or "updated" site:
Drupal is a great move on your part... However, unless your current host is allowing you MySQL access then I suggest you do consider moving the site. The database and Drupal install, and modules will add up so diskspace will become a bigger issue. Typically if I set up a site on durpal I make sure they have at least 100mb in their hosting account.

What's wonderful about Drupal or any of the other Open CMS's is the community supported developement. Finding a design that only needs a little tweaking to meet your needs is fairly easy.

From there the forum here has a great CMS/Blog area where we can go into a deeper level of helping with your Drupal questions.

--- On additional note about the hosting/Drupal is that some hosts now offer an easy install of the popular web apps like Drupal and Wordpress, I know the host I recommend does.