StateDOG

Yeah..a big project. But if things fall right, one that could be sucessful. My first priority isn't making $$, but just having it be self supporting and popular. But I don't know if PostNuke or pMachine's ExpressionEngine or Xaraya or something like that is the best option or just going static and then using Contribute. There's a new version of Contribute out now, but you can get it on eBay for about $90 I think (Educational Version)

I live in a small town. Only one high school. And the school does well in most of their athletics. I know a lot of the kids that play, a lot of the parents, and a lot of the fans in general. I thought it would be great to start a site for the school's sports teams. Of course to be able to cover football/basketball/baseball/soccer/softball/golf/tennis/track/cross crountry/swimming/etc/etc I will need some help. So I am looking to get the high school's journalism class involved in writing articles, stories, and interivews for me. So I'd need management of authors. The front page would need a logo, of course. But banner ad(s) up top. All recent articles would be on the front page (from the last week or so.) I would like to have polls for visitors to participate in as well, but not a must. A calander for upcoming games/events too. I want to have a page for each of the sports where you can see a schedule, game results, articles specific to that sport, and maybe team/individual photos. I'd also need to have a community forum. I'm already familiar with IPB and phpBB. Are there particular CMS's that will fit that better, or should I go static and just use one of the afore mentioned forums?

Any tips/hints on the solution in the 2nd rooms?

Thanks so much for your replies. Great advice. But I need to correct something...I said FRAMES when I meant to say TABLES. I've heard that it's becoming more and more common to layout pages using CSS rather than w/ tables & cells. What are you thoughts on this? I'm still new enough at it that I can focus learning page layout from the CSS standpoint more so than tables/cells. Thanks.

First of all, let me say that I know a slick piece of software doesn't automatically give someone some mad web designing skills. I've looked longingly at the design skills that many people have and the results of their talents. I kept thinking, "I could do that if I invested the time into it." But I just would read and think, "What if?" I recently found out about a guy who does some webdesign for some businesses and organizations in our local area. I thought his prices were a little high, but looked at some of his designs and they were horrible. I think they were done with an early version of FrontPage and they have gaudy animated GIFs, big fingers pointing to email addresses and junk like that. And his hosting plans are sky high as well. I thought, "He's ripping these people off!" Then I realized if the market bears it, then why shouldn't he charge those prices? Now I'm not wanting to rip people off, but I think there's $$ to be made here. It's an interest I've had that I've not been intentional about..so why not take the dive. My wife is about to have another kid this fall and she'd like to stay home from her part time job..so making some extra cash could offset that. Good plan, huh? I just got Macromedia Studio MX 2004 in the mail yesterday and I'm awaiting the delievery of a book to teach it to me. I don't expect it to do the work for me. I know I have to learn my stuff before I can flaunt anything around here. But I don't think there's much competition. So, what direction to I go in? I learn Dreamweaver and Fireworks and Flash and whatnot. But should I learn to create layouts with frames or with CSS? How important is it to learn PHP? I have a HTML book that I've been going through as well to make sure I can know what's going on "under the hood" and tinker with stuff. Should I draw out ideas on paper first or just jump into Dreamweaver and figure it out there? I am going to invest the time and effort to learn, but I will need a few pointers along the way. Thanks in advance!