Content Management Systems

[philjohns]

Ok, I know this has probably been covered be fore but Im looking for some up to dat help.

I want to learn how to use a CMS. I know of a few, Joomla! , Wordpress etc.

Basically I want to know the simplest one for me to learn where I cand esign a complety custom page and then provide the client (when I get round to doing so) with the website so that they can edit the CONTENT.


Any help really appreciated,

Phil

[tommylogic]

What do you currently use to create your web sites? Dreamweaver, GoLive, Notepad, etc?

[Toon]

Originally Posted by philjohns

Ok, I know this has probably been covered be fore but Im looking for some up to dat help.

I want to learn how to use a CMS. I know of a few, Joomla! , Wordpress etc.

Basically I want to know the simplest one for me to learn where I cand esign a complety custom page and then provide the client (when I get round to doing so) with the website so that they can edit the CONTENT.


Any help really appreciated,

Phil

Wordpress is one of the best to customize but with all the addon's for Joomla it's maybe the easiest for what you want. Expression Engine is the best I've seen and yes it costs, but for a reason.

[philjohns]

Im not really looking at spending any money at the moment. I currently use Taco HTML edit (thanks to Toon ;)) but I also have installed on my machine Dreamweaver CS3.

[tommylogic]

Well, using Dreamweaver, it is VERY simple to allow CMS through "Contribute". You would have to be fairly familiar with creating templates from within Dreamweaver in order to control editable regions and such from the client end. It's not a large learning curve for current Dreamweaver users.

About CMS in general... the very basic idea is that any CMS works through a "template" system. The template is created by the designer who allows certain sections for the users to add & change areas of the content.

Imagine a basic layout. You have div's defining areas. You may have an div's for header, menu, content, footer. You want to lock everything but the content for example. You would do that by creating a template that locks those regions. The user changes the content via a CMS.

No matter which system you use, there is a learning curve. Contribute can operate using standard html, while Joomla, WordPress and other similar solutions use php-MySQL. If you were to create a template in those, you would have to have a firm grasp on php and the standard LAMP setup.

Check out the Contribute Info HERE
Be sure to click on the "Feature Tour" and watch it in action.

It is by far the easiest for the end user that I have seen. I usually bundle in the cost of the product (approx $129 - $179) with the design & CMS package. The software install, and basic familiarity is part of my package deal. I make sure to charge extra for the sitewide template changes & additional tutoring.

[philjohns]

So basically, if I was to use contribute I would design a template in dreamweaver, and additional templates if certain pages were different. And I would then take it on over into contribute to add the text content and images?

[tommylogic]

You place the initial content, the 4-8 pages or whatever you work out in the contract, but yeah. You do all the administrative end in Dreamweaver, defining all your default folders and templates. Then the client works through Contribute, adding pages, modifying content articles, images whatever they want. They base their choices off the predefined templates you supplied them with. If they want more template pages than the original contract, well charge more

[Redboat]

For small budgets Joomla or Wordpress are great options. In fact Contribute is not that expensive but it is not dynamic so is a little clumsy to use.

Wordpress has the easiest learning curve and I would say is the easiest to teach clients. It is also easier to template/design for this over Joomla.

I have used all three with good results. The main thing is to gauge the technical skills of the client. Joomla for instance can be very daunting for some one who just about knows how to use Word. I have made the mistake in the past of quoting for a Joomla site only to spend hours training clients on how to use it. A lesson learned :)

Actually, Does anyone have advice on how you cost for training for CMS systems whether it be your own or a 3rd party system?

[afox]

Another alternative, depending on how much freedom to edit you need, is Texty.com It's free, extremely light weight, and can be plugged into any website for the main content.

[Redboat]

Not sure on the reliability as the copy seems to be hosted on their server? I could be wrong. You would probably be better off using Tiny MCE + image manager along with TXT files and build your own lightweight CMS? Again I may have the concept of texty wrong.

They also include fonts in the editor which would break certain levels of W3C / WAI. Although in saying that a client can break this with most editors/systems.

Not sure however if the expression engine has restraints in place to maintain accessibility? I know I have had to clean up a couple of contribute sites after the users had pasted everything from Word. A common thing :) (Some editors do have Paste from Word but users tend to ignore it :)

Paul