Web site creating software - beginner's questions

We want to revamp our church's web site to make it more modern and friendly.

I currently do it in HTML with a little Java and server-side PHP. My knowledge of such is - currently - pretty limited. We have a perfectly satisfactory hosting service and although we don't want to change we'd prefer not to be constrained to use a particular host if realistic.

Essentially the way I work is that all the coding is done on my PC, then the various pages are uploaded via FTP to the site. I also have a web server running on my PC so I can fully simulate the web site for test purposes. Whether that approach is feasible with some sort of building software I don’t know.

I’ve just been reading about Wix, and other web site builders. As we have a perfectly satisfactory – and paid for – hosting service it seems a shame to have to move. And their solutions are more expensive than we're currently paying for our site hosting.

I guess the possibilities include:
* Moving to a Wix type solution, and thus moving our site, domain, etc to them.
* Finding some relatively inexpensive free-standing web site building software. Would prefer not to use WordPress.

In the case of the latter to what extent can development and testing be carried out off-line?

I realise that my thinking is undoubtedly muddled but, at this stage, I don't yet understand enough about the options to necessarily ask the right questions.

I'd appreciate some help in thinking things through and, if possible, finding suitable software.

WordPress is probably the most straightforward option:

Pros:

• Almost all hosting companies support it
• Written using PHP (which you seem to know)
• Small footprint
• Content can be added out of the box - you can worry about theming and additional functionality later
• Easy to manage - good control of user privileges
• Easy to keep up-to-date
• Free themes are readily available
• A lot of themes have flexible layout and will work with mobile devices
• Easy to switch most themes
• Themes can be modified
• Sub-themes can be created (so that you don't have to modify main themes)
• Plenty of free plugins are available (but beware security issues)
• You can use WordPress's free hosting (if you don't mind a limited choice of themes and plugins)
• You don't have to worry about security issues if you use WordPress's own hosting
• There are plenty of tutorials and books available
• You can test and develop WordPress sites (and most other frameworks) on your own PC (I do)

Cons:

• Unlike new posts, there is no facility for submitting edits to posts for review (this is my main bugbear)
• WordPress can be insecure and must be kept up-to-date (but then what software isn't?)
• Plugins can be insecure and must be kept up-to-date
• It can be hard to find suitable themes (because there are so many)

Unfortunately, I have have no experience with other web frameworks (except for Ruby on Rails, which has a steep learning curve and is very resource-intensive).

There are plenty of content management systems out there (WordPress is specifically aimed at creating weblogs). Two well-established content management systems (not just for blogging) written in PHP are:

• Joomla!
• Drupal

Unfortunately, I know almost nothing about them.

Edited by micksharpe (Thu 16-Feb-17 01:07:42)

I would second WordPress. Extremely easy to use and you do not have to use it as a Blog

In reply to a post by cheshire_man:

* Finding some relatively inexpensive free-standing web site building software.

Relatively inexpensive to the extent of being completely free:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/download/details.asp...

Tsohost offer free hosting if you are a registered charity. (10GB Web Space, 150GB Bandwidth, I Hosted Website, 5 mailboxes, Linux & Windows OS, Wordpress included too) All they ask in return is a small banner on the site to show their support.

Cheers!

Much as I love TSOHOST, that isn't actually relevant to the query.