CMS Services?

[The Confused]

I have been trying to find a solution where clients can update their own content. Most of my clients have no editing experience.

Godaddy currently uses various CMS's. I have no server side coding knowledge at all. I am curious if anyone out there knows which CMS works best? I have been looking at Drupal, Joomla, Xoops and CMS made easy(not on godaddy).

I had also thought of giving my clients Adobe contribute, but I dont want to pay for it and dont think they do either.

Thank you very much for your input.

[webhost.uk.net]

Try Drupal is really secure and best.

[The Confused]

How easy is Drupal to use with already premade Sites with html and CSS? Don't you need to use Drupal's own code?

[nthampi]

From my understanding of your requirement, I think you (or your clients) need to use something like Adobe DreamWeaver or Microsoft Expression Web.

[claybutler]

For adding some CMS to a static site I highly recommend Free and simple CMS CushyCMS (http://www.cushycms.com)

It's free and super easy. You can literally make a static page editable in 5 minutes.

Converting a complete static site into a full top to bottom CMS is never a pleasant experience. Cushy CMS is a really elegant halfway solution.

[HHI_Golf_Guy]

There are many good CMS systems out there, but I prefer Joomla over them all. What's great about Joomla is its community of developers. There are some great extensions and templates out there, many of them free. Even the paid extensions are usually inexpensive.

[moonviper]

Nothing in the world can compete with wordpress... they've got plugins that will do anything in the world, and most of my clients are able to figure out how to use it without even a moment of training.

[tkershaw]

The CMS I am familiar with is called WebsiteBaker and has served our new site well.


Tony.

[Uncle Dog]

a solution where clients can update their own content. You need to decide/ascertain how much control you want to give them/they want to take. CMS ranges from just editing the text on existing pages (easy) all the way through to redesigning/restructuring entire sites.

I often design sites with a little homegrown CMS so that the owner can quickly update the text on existing pages (prices, dates, special offers, events etc). It costs virtually nothing to have this kind of functionality.

[The Confused]

Thank you all for your input. I am leaning toward "Nvu". Rather than reinvent the wheel and learn all the pertinent coding languages for Drupal, wordpress, Joomala, etc.. I think giving the client this Nvu client would be easier on me.

I have also found with services such as CushyCMS, pagebreeze, soholaunch, flyspec, etc.. you need to pay for these items monthly. You could opt for the free versions but these free versions are loaded with other offers making it very easy for clients to choose another developer\hosting provider.

Thanks again.

[Clarrie]

We went through the same sort of "which CMS" process a few years ago. Decision was ultimately between Drupal and Joomla (well, actually Mambo at the time).

Our final choice was to go with Joomla, mainly because we felt the Joomla interface was slightly more user friendly for non-technical users.

Haven't looked properly at Drupal for a couple of years, but these two would still be at the top of my comparison list, not least because they have great community support, and huge ranges of additional plug in components.

And as for "learning a new language" well you don't generally need to start hacking core code around - all you basically need is a good working knowledge of html and CSS to be able to build templates and style the components you use.

If you are using GoDaddy, I gather there are some particular wrinkles in their setup for several of the common CMS systems which you might need to think about. For Joomla hosting in the US we've used Rochen and Siteground without any problems.

[seopo]

Your looking at two different options as the same.

NVU is a HTML editor. It's a peice of software to download, edit, upload etc files. It's not a CMS your effectively turning your clients into mini web designers. Infact you probably use something like this yourself already? If you provide this for your clients there will be a learning curve but also a large possibility that they will muck up the site. Which inturn they'll blame on you giving you a bit of a headaches as you try to fix your errors. (If you take this option do regular backups of the files.)

If you opt for a CMS, your going to have to go through the learning curve and it's going to cost you time but save your clients time and money. Really you should be going down this route and charging them for this service.

My 2cents.

[colin4255]

If you want something that is simple for clients to use (has an interface like MS Word), can upload images and scale them etc AND you want to be able to let them change HTML pages that already exist that have already designed, but you want a back-end interface they can log in to, you could do worse than try some very clever software called snippetmaster.

All you do is put two lines of code in your html page where you want them to be able to begin and end editing, and once you've uploaded their software to your server, it works very well. Uses Ioncube but no need for mysql databses, nothing complex to set up and unlike a lot of stuff out there, written by geeks or by people who don't see the need for detailed instructions, snippetmasters r instructions are truly outstanding, as is their support if anything goes wrong or you can't get it to work.

But the best bit is that a domain license is less than $60 US

I've used it on a number of client sites and they all love it. If you want to change text only, they even offer a free version of snippetmaster that you do not have to license, but the downside is that it will not permit the uploading of images, only text based changes.

Simple to install, simple to make any html page editable, secure back end, easy for customers to use and cheap. AND before you ask, no I don't sell it or even work for them, but after trying loads of CMS systems, most of which are either overkill, so convoluted to learn I'd need six months off work, or I can't design exactly like a client wants - this is an excellent option.

[textbox]

Although we have an inhouse CMS which we put our clients on, I would recommend wordpress for a beginner wanting to get a small site up and running quickly. The community behind it is great.

[kms1167]

There are many good CMS systems out there, but I prefer Joomla over them all. What's great about Joomla is its community of developers. There are some great extensions and templates out there, many of them free. Even the paid extensions are usually inexpensive.

I agree, I am using Joomla and the number of users and extensions is incredible. It is an extremely flexible system. I have also found their forum users are very willing to help as well.