School sports website with subdomains for each sport
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I'm a volunteer for a school. I'd like to setup a website for a schools sports programs that has the following features:
- Includes subdomains for each sport (i.e. tennis.myhighschool.com, baseball.myhighschool.com, etc). We will likely use 10-20 subdomains. Only 1/3 of the sites will have activity depending on the season. And only really parents, players and a few fans will be accessing the sites. We're talking in the 100s of people per week.
- Each subdomain (sport) would have 3 possible admin accounts (coach, volunteer and admin). I'd like to prevent the 3 admins per sport from messing up data in another subdomain.
- Content management has to be extremely easy for non-techies to handle. This is why I think C5 is the best approach!!!
- I have approval for some inexpensive web hosting. I was thinking GoDaddy 4GH.
- I've run out of money for CMS support (or addons). I read about Domain Mapper but I don't have money for it.
- GoDaddy supports unlimited domains and has support for 50 FTP accounts which can be assigned to each subdomain.
Can I use C5 for this project? What is the best approach?
Should I just install C5 in each subdomain subdirectory and use the FTP accounts to separate the subdomain accounts?
Or should I use just one install of C5 with permissions?
Host:
Which host will give the best performance for C5 and bet the easiest to setup? We will likely just have students and parents access the site in the Houston area.
- Includes subdomains for each sport (i.e. tennis.myhighschool.com, baseball.myhighschool.com, etc). We will likely use 10-20 subdomains. Only 1/3 of the sites will have activity depending on the season. And only really parents, players and a few fans will be accessing the sites. We're talking in the 100s of people per week.
- Each subdomain (sport) would have 3 possible admin accounts (coach, volunteer and admin). I'd like to prevent the 3 admins per sport from messing up data in another subdomain.
- Content management has to be extremely easy for non-techies to handle. This is why I think C5 is the best approach!!!
- I have approval for some inexpensive web hosting. I was thinking GoDaddy 4GH.
- I've run out of money for CMS support (or addons). I read about Domain Mapper but I don't have money for it.
- GoDaddy supports unlimited domains and has support for 50 FTP accounts which can be assigned to each subdomain.
Can I use C5 for this project? What is the best approach?
Should I just install C5 in each subdomain subdirectory and use the FTP accounts to separate the subdomain accounts?
Or should I use just one install of C5 with permissions?
Host:
Which host will give the best performance for C5 and bet the easiest to setup? We will likely just have students and parents access the site in the Houston area.
Thanks for the response.
I'm still wrestling with one install of C5 with permissions and multiple C5 installs, one per subdomain.
If I have a C5 installation for each subdomain, would I still setup C5 permissions in each sub-domain for the coach, volunteer and site admin (me)?
If I use C5, it seems like I would never need to setup FTP accounts for each admin (coach, website volunteer or admin). In this case, it seems like the multiple FTP accounts approach is more for Joomla or direct editing of HTML/CSS and not for C5. Is this right?
Lastly, if I go with one installation of C5 with permissions, could I map the subdomain tennis.myhighschool.com towww.www.myhighschool.com/tennis... when creating the subdomain?
The subdomains only matter to me so that coaches can use the simplest address to get everyone to their sport (i.e. tennis.myhighschool.com instead ofwww.www.myhighschool.com/tennis).... The only other reason I mentioned subdomains was because it was the first way I discovered how to segregate the sports websites, using an FTP account assigned to a subdomain. But it sounds like the FTP account access method isn't useful when using C5. It is fine by me since C5 content editing is very easy.
I'm still wrestling with one install of C5 with permissions and multiple C5 installs, one per subdomain.
If I have a C5 installation for each subdomain, would I still setup C5 permissions in each sub-domain for the coach, volunteer and site admin (me)?
If I use C5, it seems like I would never need to setup FTP accounts for each admin (coach, website volunteer or admin). In this case, it seems like the multiple FTP accounts approach is more for Joomla or direct editing of HTML/CSS and not for C5. Is this right?
Lastly, if I go with one installation of C5 with permissions, could I map the subdomain tennis.myhighschool.com towww.www.myhighschool.com/tennis... when creating the subdomain?
The subdomains only matter to me so that coaches can use the simplest address to get everyone to their sport (i.e. tennis.myhighschool.com instead ofwww.www.myhighschool.com/tennis).... The only other reason I mentioned subdomains was because it was the first way I discovered how to segregate the sports websites, using an FTP account assigned to a subdomain. But it sounds like the FTP account access method isn't useful when using C5. It is fine by me since C5 content editing is very easy.
You've got it! You would still need to play with permissions if you want say the coach to only be able to do these two things and the volunteer to only be able to say update the event calendar.
Correct, Concrete5 has a front facing file manager interface for your coaches and volunteers to work with and the Tiny MCE (WYSIWYG) editor pulls files directly from that.
You can still use subdomains if you want. You can create a re-direct when you set up the subdomains for tennis.myhighschol.com to myhighschool.com/tennis. Neither the user, nor the coach would have to do anything, although the final url would be myhighschool.com/tennis.
Correct, Concrete5 has a front facing file manager interface for your coaches and volunteers to work with and the Tiny MCE (WYSIWYG) editor pulls files directly from that.
You can still use subdomains if you want. You can create a re-direct when you set up the subdomains for tennis.myhighschol.com to myhighschool.com/tennis. Neither the user, nor the coach would have to do anything, although the final url would be myhighschool.com/tennis.
Thank you very much. It sounds like C5 definitely meets my needs.
For hosting, is there a tool to evaluate the best hosting company? Should I look at the number of hops or find a tool to evaluate response time for their demo sites?
For hosting, is there a tool to evaluate the best hosting company? Should I look at the number of hops or find a tool to evaluate response time for their demo sites?
Honestly, you could do that, but a lot of what you need you still won't know until you're in the thick of things. What you need to avoid is getting reduced bandwidth on your sub domains, which I personally experienced on iPage and could never truly overcome despite all kinds of attempts at caching. I'm with pacifichost now and have no such issues.
I bought some hosting from BlueHost. And now I'm trying to setup C5. I decided to try to use one install of C5 to support a 'portal' and the 15 or so sports micro sites.
I want to setup a template that should mostly work for each sport and use the template when I setup each sport. I also want a portal page to direct people to whichever sport they are interested in. For the most flexibility I'd like to set all this up so that each micro-site for a sport can change it's theme without changing another sport's theme. I'm not going to tell anyone but I'm going to assume it will come up in the next few months.
Any hints on how to get started with the portal and mini-sites? Right now I'm just trying different things through the UI.
I want to setup a template that should mostly work for each sport and use the template when I setup each sport. I also want a portal page to direct people to whichever sport they are interested in. For the most flexibility I'd like to set all this up so that each micro-site for a sport can change it's theme without changing another sport's theme. I'm not going to tell anyone but I'm going to assume it will come up in the next few months.
Any hints on how to get started with the portal and mini-sites? Right now I'm just trying different things through the UI.
you can user page permissions to allow each sports admin access to change the theme on their individual site, by disallowing thing permission to other pages.
Also, just so you know, my company is working on some sports themes that we'll be putting on the marketplace next week:
Concrete5 will definitely be great for what you're trying to do and there are a few different ways to do it.
You CAN set up one install and use multiple sites, such as domain mapper, or multiple domains (another add-on $60). There is a free add-on that is developer level, so if you are comfortable messing with code then it is here:http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/multi-url-site/...
Another way to do things is to just do multiple installs of c5 on each sub domain, which is still a perfectly valid way of doing things. You would just need to add external URLs in the sitemaps of each install for the other subdomains if you wanted them in the main navigation.
Now the way you were talking about that made use of permissions to cordon off the site would be one c5 install, but wouldn't map quite the same, instead of tennis.myhighschool.com, it would be myhighschool.com/tennis. I don't know if that matters to you, but...
I personally have been putting my clients into Arvixe for hosting which also supports unlimited subdomains and unlimited FTP accounts, if I don't host them myself:http://www.arvixe.com/concrete5_hosting...
Arvixe is listed as a hosting partner for concrete5:http://www.concrete5.org/services/hosting/...