Lissa, hi. We’re a small historical society with no paid staff and I built our website using Weebly, for free. It’s not as fancy as something that a webmaster could do, but if you don’t have a webmaster and need to be able to just drag and drop photos and text, and are OK to use one of their templates, it’s pretty darn easy. Of course ours started small and I keep adding to it. The free website also includes a blog facility, if you want it, and offers a slideshow capability, which I really like (see link below). If you look through our website and click around, you’ll find a good portion of the features offered in the free version. It also offers basic stats – like how many unique visitors (and page views) you get each day.

http://hatfieldhistory.weebly.com/1/category/polish%20center/1.html

If you want to add audio or video clips, though, you need to jump for the premium version (around $80/year). At this point, there may be other services that offer audio/video for free – and of course you can always host your videos on YouTube. What’s nice about Weebly is that it’s easy enough for a non-techie like me to add stuff, or make small changes, quickly and easily. I have an older business website that my tech person/partner (who happens to be my husband) built, but it’s too complicated for me to make changes – so changes are hardly ever made.

If you have any detail questions, feel free to contact me off list.

--Kathie

Kathie Gow

Oral History Producer

http://www.wordspicturesstories.com

Curator, Hatfield Historical Museum

http://hatfieldhistory.weebly.com

Hi folks,

I'm building a web site from the ground up for a small, community museum with no staff.  What do you recommend?  They need something that is easy to maintain, free, and can support things like Paypal donations or purchases, be a drop for cookbook submissions, and supply basic static information.  It would be nice if it could eventually handle more complex actions, like video shorts.  I think I'm looking for a range right now, with simple maintenance as the primary goal and future flexibility as optimal.  What has been working for all of you?

--

-L.

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