kev670:Is there any way of being able to write short messages on the site without having to go through the code
What type of code? The HTML markup or something else? What scripting languages does the hosting company support?
If the page is just going to have some text (dates and event descriptions for example) that you want the customer to be able to modify, you could put that text in an include file and give them access to update only that file. Most scripting languages support includes one way or another. You could expose those contents via FTP or an "admin" web page that allows an authenticated user to edit the text via their web browser.
If you need something more sophisticated, you may have to go the route of a database.