I am very new to building a website from scratch (my experience is in using pre-existing templates only or maintaining existing sites and forums).
I need to be able to do the following with this new website:
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Have at least two levels of accessibility (public & member-login access); preferably three levels (public, member login, leader login), with viewable pages corresponding to those levels.
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Have an events calendar with RSVP capability for registered users only – not visible to the public (with preferably the ability to tie into an email list, so ideally we can email out an event announcement and include two links to RSVP YES and RSVP NO).
I have iWeb on my laptop. But I can’t find adequate plugins for it to do what we need.
I tried WordPress but the blog aspects were very frustrating to deal with. The purpose of the site is not a blog. It’s to communicate general info publicly, and specific event info to registered members (with the ability for them to RSVP, etc.). A blog is very low on my list of priorities for the site.
So I uninstalled WordPress and tried Joomla, because I found what looked like some potential plugins for it (http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/calendars-a-events/events/events-registration). But I admit, I am completely lost now. It is even less intuitive than WordPress.
Does anyone have any recommendations for which website building software would work best for what I’m needing? Doesn’t have to be open-sourced, etc. But of course free is good. Thank you!