CMS Software - Building/Controlling Websites - What Options?

[send2paul]

Morning All :)

First and foremost I'd say I have a rough idea of what I'm talking about. So, let me say what I know, and then what I want to know....

What I know - CMS software allows a user to control, edit, change, upload different parts/pages of their website. CMS software does MORE than the likes of Dreamweaver MX2004, (where you can use "snippets" for example to change coding across a website at the click of a button).

Where I'm at now - I'm just about to embark, (given the time away from the off-line world!), to expand my present webpages & create a few more websites. I do use MX2004, but probably not all of it's best functionalities.

What I want to know...
1. Is some kind of CMS software the right way to go for me?
2. If "yes" to Q1. - which kind of CMS software does anyone recommend?

Before y'all start talking Apache, PHP Squirrels icon_wink.gif etc - I know nothing of these things. Is there any kind of .exe software I install on my pc where I just load up to my webspace by ftp, for example. Or is there any web-based applications where you just log-in and "do stuff" there?

Naturally, I'm looking for the ultimate thing - something that's free and uncomplicated - does such a thing exist?

I have had a search around on these already, but it all seems to be about loading things up to servers etc and talking in strange languages like Python etc etc.

Any help would, of course be greatly appreciated.

p.s. I'm just off round to Tescos to get the weekly shop - so I'll be back in a couple of hours if you don't see me respond straight away to any replies. Thanks again chaps & chapesses :)

[brian.mark]

The nature of CMS is that it is all done online. It's really designed so people without any HTML knowledge or design knowledge can maintain a website themselves. WPW is sort of a simple version of a CMS. 1000's of us can work on different pages of this website at the same time without problems. We can all write content (many here don't know HTML) and publish it through software instead of needing FTP and then having to update links all over the website to point to it.

As for free, I remember seeing one called Mondo a long time ago that was OpenSource. I played with it a bit, but never really made an actual site with it.

I've talked to the people at Ektron a few times, but that's far from free software. It's supposed to be very SEO friendly, but that comes for a premium. With enough knowledge of SEO, anything could be made to be search friendly - but it could take some time (if that's your concern even.)

Additionally, you could look at some blogging software. That's really not all that different than a CMS in many cases, especially if you're just trying to fill out your site with content.

Brian.

[speed]

1. Is some kind of CMS software the right way to go for me?
Depends on what you want to do, for us we are rolling our own CMS because it will allow our clients to update portions of their site without waiting for us to do the updates for them.

The CMS can decouple presentation from content therefore the user types the content, publishes it and it just displays without them having to worry about linking the new page in or keeping the styling consistent.

Due to the decoupling of content and presentation in theory site redesigns should be quicker as it's a case of replacing the templates and the content just slots back in.

(yes I know this can also be done with DW or GoLive).

One nice thing you can do is because the site is dynamic you can schedule content to publish/unpublish at given times therefore if you run a promotion the ad can be set to unpublish when the promo expires without you having to remember to do it.

At the end of the day only you can say if a CMS or which CMS is the way to go.


2. If "yes" to Q1. - which kind of CMS software does anyone recommend?
Have a look on http://www.opensourcecms.com/ there's several CMSs installed so you can play with them without having to install them all.

mambo is supposed to be one of the better ones, you're best bet is to try them all.

I have had a search around on these already, but it all seems to be about loading things up to servers etc and talking in strange languages like Python etc etc.
Depending on the CMS you choose you will have to ensure your host supports say PHP and MySQL and yes you will have to upload the application to your server.

Some like mambo have an installer which you run after uploading, which walks you through the steps a bit like installing a windows app.

There's also Macromedia Contribute which as far as I know doesn't install anything on the server, but for a single user there's no advantage over using DW.

[send2paul]

Thanks Brian & Speed.

It's been a bit of an education for me today! :)

I think I was getting confused over what I actually wanted/needed. I wanted something for me which I could use to design sites with easily - and manage them. So, it was more of a design/maintenance tool I was after. Yes - DW coud fit the bill, but it is a bit of a monster to get to grips with.

Finall I can across XSitePro (http://www.xsitepro.com/) - anybody heard anything about this? Apparently, it's very good - I was just wondering if anyone has had any experience of it?

Thanks again people :)

[speed]

When choosing a tool you need to make sure that it does what you want and more importantly that it generates valid and accessible pages.

I'm assuming XSitePro was used to build it's own site, therefore a quick check revels 233 mark-up errors on the home page and use of depreciated mark-up and other errors which cause it to fail WAI guidelines.

Lots of tools will generate bad output if used incorrectly therefore it might be that these problems are all easily fixed through careful use of the application I don't know, so all I can say is get a demo copy and try it.

I'm quite a fan of using GoLive to manage sites, though I use it's code view not WYSIWYG mode to generate pages as I don't like the code it generates.

[send2paul]

Cheers speed.

I may have a look at Go live as well as XSitePro.

[jomariet]

You might check with your site's host to see if they offer a website builder. Some of them are really CMS rather than wysiwyg editors.

JM

http://www.probizhosting.net
http://www.crucibledesigns.com

[send2paul]

Good call jomariet :)

I'll give that a shot as well.

Thanks again everyone.