WANTED - Easy to Make Portfolio Site

[Mac 5]

I'd like to make a website for a group of artists. I can make the main webpages and graphics, but our group has about 50 artists. I would a site where each artist can add/update their own portfolio, bio, etc. The graphic design ability varies in the group from people that are graphic artists to others who have never done anything before. So an easy template that people can update with an online wizard would be great. For those artists that know more, they can do there own. The ability to add a paypal, buy now, or shopping cart feature would be nice also.

[MuNKyonline]

I'd post this in the Freelance section. You'll get more replies/offers in there =)

You'd need a database driven site I would of thought.

[Mac 5]

I don't want a freelance artist to design the site. I can build the main webpages on the site and graphics, but I don't want to make/update a portfolio for 50 other people. I'd like it a do-it- yourself site for the other artists.

I'm looking more for a host or advice from designer out there who has made a site like this.

[speed]

From what you are describing you are going to have to build quite a complex system, I say build as I've not seen anything available off the shelf.

The ability to add a paypal, buy now, or shopping cart feature would be nice also.

If you add a shopping cart it has to be smart enough to keep products from different artists separate as otherwise you'll pay one artist the whole amount while ordering from many, unless you become the retailer buying from the artist and reselling to the site visitor.

If you use the native PayPal cart then if the visitor adds a product from artist A then artist B they might get confused as to why the product from artist A vanished and they only have B's product, or why they received the order from B but not A because they didn't pay via A's cart as well as B's.

Lot's to think about there.

MuNKy is right about you needing a database driven site it's going to be the easiest, you'll need a login system so each user can login and edit their bio/portfolio, but not access anyone else's.

For editing the bio you need to supply a WYSIWYG editor or BBCode or something like that as I've found if you give people raw HTML you get invalid mark-up.

You'll also need some sort of admin interface so that you can add, delete users also being able to suspend access for a user isn't such a bad idea.

I favour PHP/MySQL for projects like this but ASP or any other server side scripting and database should be fine.

For visitors viewing the site the server side script simply inserts the artists bio from the database or whatever is being viewed into an (x)HTML template which you create.

Difficult to know what else to put here.

[MuNKyonline]

Oh i see! Found this, don't know if this is any help?

http://www.pd-go.com

[slideri812]

I would suggest looking at Mambo here http://www.mamboserver.com/.

There is a community module and a paypal module. Not to mention the sleu of other features that function right out of the box.

Best part is it is free.

Next I would suggest you create your page layout, art work and CSS and then please DO use a mambo freelancer to put it all together. You can find dozens of highly skilled people to do this for $50 and up at mamboforge http://mamboforge.net/.

And last here are a coule of sites that we have done with Mambo. We are still learning but we're not doing to bad:

www.cahaonline.com
www.iull360.com
www.melannie.info
www.dcvi.net

They are not finished but thay are up and they work. Mambo uses PHP and MySQL and it has a huge developer community and tons (over 800) of components and modules and is so totaly doable. You can test the front and back ends at the mambo main site.

You can also use PHPnuke or PHPBB and Adscense and so man other great things.

[Mac 5]

Another option would be that I could build a site where I can make the main pages with links to the other artists. They could do what they wanted and host it elsewhere if they want. For example a OS Commerce storefront, e-bay store, geocities, their own host and build their own pages.

Thanks slideri812, MuNKy, & speed I'll look into the links below. Anyone with other ideas I'lll be looking for more do-it-yourself sites for the other artists.