: Letting hosted forum users design their own forums? I'm developing forum/blog hosting software. I'd like the forum/blog owners that'll be using my service to be able to layout and style their

@Turnbaugh106

Posted in: #Template #WebHosting

I'm developing forum/blog hosting software. I'd like the forum/blog owners
that'll be using my service to be able to layout and style their own pages, e.g. make their own forum/blog "landing page", or about page, or page listing the hottest forum threads.

I figure I could either build some graphical HTML design tool, which allows
forum/blog owners to visually drag-and-drop page components to construct pages.
Reminiscent of e.g. drag-and-drop-website-builder www.weebly.com/, or snappages.com/ or doodlekit.com/.
Or I could provide a template language, so forum/blog owners could write
their own CSS and HTML in that template language.


The template language approach seems terribly much easier than the
graphical design tool approach, and more
powerful for those who understands HTML — but terribly hard for those who
don't?
I want to spend as little time as possible with this templating / design tool
stuff. It's not particularly related to the Unique Selling Point. But I
think I need to do something.


Questions:


What do you think I should do? Start with a template system and then later
on consider some user friendly graphical design tools? Or let non-techies
click-and-choose between templates/CSS made available by technically skilled
people?
Other benefits/drawbacks of the template or graphical-design-tool approaches?
Do you have any general comments? E.g. in what manners is all this silly? Or
what should I do differently... or not at all?

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