Not quite a blog - group access to coaching log

After some vaguely running related advice again please.

I am a bit of an IT numpty so not only do I not know the answer to this, I can't understand the information I am finding on the web, so can someone maybe help this out.

Our club coaches want to set up some kind of web hosted facility which we can all access, edit and update, to record all the training sessions we have taken, what worked well or didn't, to outline plans for future sessions, and to work out availability of coaches.

This would just be a resource for the 6 coaches. We tried just e-mailing versions of the log between us but that didn't work as updates went missing.

So, we just need some tables with text content which can be edited.

Now, looking at Community Blogs, all the ones I can see, insofar as I understand them, they just seem to have a message board facility; whereas we want to be able to all edit existing tables as well.

Is it possible to do this? Can anyone suggest a suitable service? Very gratfeul for any suggestions.

Comments

  • www.blogger.com - you can add as many members as you like as long as they all have Google IDs
  • oh you can also make it private so only those people have access
  • I also saw (can't remember where) someone using google spreadsheets to post stats & logs on a blog.

    http://www.spreadsheets.google.com - lets you upload & share spreadsheets. You could link these into the blog.

    If your club has it's own server for their website & is looking to host then wordpress.org is a free blog with lots of great plugins that add functionailty. It can be mutli-user and also have static pages for articles / advice. I use it to run my website from an old 366mhz laptop & it does a fine job. Have a look & see if it's the kind of thing you are after.
    http://kieren.demon.co.uk/wordpress/

    A more fully featured software you could try is 'Drupal' or 'Joomla' although they are harder to set up but do have the option to add forums*.

    If that's the kind of thing you are after, they are called CMS - content management systems & there are lots of free versions with templates to make them pretty & plugs in to add functions.

    Thankfully you can try out free versions of them at the following link
    http://www.opensourcecms.com/

    * I think wordpress has a plugin to add forums but only a basic kind
  • Thanks Kieren - I want to keep this very very simple at the moment. We have a club website but the chap who does all that side of things is very tied up with work at the moment so there's no chance of him being able to set things up for us for a little while, hence complete idiot me having a go.

    Thanks as well Cath but I'm struggling to get it to act as anything other than a messageboard at the moment.
  • with regard to coach scheules, google calendars can also be shared, made public etc
    http://www.google.com/calendar
    (I think MSN also offer this type of thing but with the spreadsheets & plugins to blog software like wordpress I think google would be better - besides, they are less evil ;] )

    If you are not hosting your own webserver, Wordpress also offers an online hosted blog. This can be found at the dot com site rather than the dot org. Link below.
    http://wordpress.com/features/

    Wordpress has great support & themes to customise your look. It also has great documentation. I'm not sure if you can get plugins to work with the dotcom site though as I have only tried the home install
  • Kieren - just looked at those google links and it seems to do exactly what I need. If I combine that with a blog function then we're laughting.

    Excellent. Thanks.
  • I've been trying to find how to integrate into the blog. If I find the way I shall link it here as it's a feature I'd like to use to show stats for my weekly running & any other clever things what ever spreadsheet I download can do.

    Glad to help - I hope it works well :)
  • I thought I'd bump this as I'd like to hear if anyone else has any solutions especially with regard to getting spreadsheets int blog posts.
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