Huh...It's strange to post in Programming...Interesting....
So I need some suggestions/help. I work at an absolutely amazing 3 week summer program in New Orleans. I could gush for a long time, but the gist of it is that we take kids who are not used to being successful during the school year for a variety of reasons (attention/impulsive, social skills, anxiety, home life, learning disabilities - whatever) and give them 3 weeks of acceptance/success/confidence boost while simultaneously teaching them and their families some basic vocabulary and strategies they can use to develop coping skills. The staff is amazing, the kids are amazing, and I love it. I had several moments of tears as camp ended yesterday...
We are a very old fashion camp. Activities are done with markers and crayons, and my director is open but not tech savy - it's a 35 year old program and doesn't even have a website. I've promised the rest of the staff that I will work on an online application for next year. I'm trying to figure out how to do it as cheaply and efficiently as possible. My original plan was to use google forms, but I'm not sure how easy that will be. Here are the basic requirements...keeping in mind that I haven't programmed anything but stats in 15 years, anyone have any thoughts as to the best way to do a SIMPLE online application?
Here are all of the requirements as best as I can figure them out...
1. Secure - kid's disabilities go on here
2. A very simple opening page with a welcome message and places where users can click if they are a parent or a teacher.
3. Parents fill out form information - it includes fill in the blanks, short answers, drop down menu selections etc.
4. Parents upload a photo that goes with the application
5. Teacher form also include "rating scale" options
6. The information populates an excel form that I could mail merge into a more "document" format (easy part I think - it does not have to automatically match teacher and parent apps, I can do that by hand)
7. MAYBE accept deposit payment in some sort of way that doesn't cost us....otherwise they're still mailing us check's.
My current plan is to get a domain, then link it with a google apps for work account, and then request that it be made HIPAA compliant (i.e. secure). Make the application basically a google form. That would put the data into a google doc which I could then export to excel and mail merge. My biggest concern is uploading pictures and keeping them with the rest of the students' info. I'm not sure how I'd do that in google forms.
Anyone have any suggestions/advice/help if there's another approach I should be considering? We are a non-profit, but that status is kinda strange cause we're loosely affiliated with a school - but I think I could use that for cheap hosting somewhere if I need to go that route.