Content Management using PHP/MySQL, MAC

[tanmonkey]

Have you tried Plume? < http://www.plume-cms.net/ > It's open, has an eager and smart forum support netywork and is simple to use.

I had some trouble getting it set up and looking right initially, but if you can get it humming it's not hard for users to run with it.

[Orion]

If you're interested I have a few not for profits and small sites which I wanted the same thing so I paid a student and under my guidance used fckeditor and created a really nice, simple, and light CMS which doesn't even require a database connection, it writes the pages and uses xml for other data.

Anyway msg me if you want some more info..

[oneofmanytims]

Xoops is a good, stable cms - http://xoops.org or compare it at http://www.cmsmadesimple.org/

Or get a php programmer to create an easy-to-use cms that is designed just for your client. Compared to the cost of learning a full-blown program it could be the way to go.

[mbangel]

I've been playing with one called Mambo lately, it seems pretty full featured, not too awful complicated...

[espectations]

I also used Xoops for a non-profit web site Fly-in destinations Southern Africa which we are designing for a client.

I found the modules very easy to use and only in some cases some knowledge of PHP was required.

The Formulize team time have been great as far as support is concerned and responded to all my enquiries promptly. In my opinion this module is great if you want your community to contribute to your content.

It is the most support that I got from any of these type of sites so I am quite impressed.

[PARoss]

I've had good luck with http://www.snippetmaster.com. It is as simply as they come, installs automatically, and allows editing between any snippet tags that you place. So, the essential design code is protected from unknowing fingers.

Phil

[texxs]

I had a client that was waaaay computer illertate but wanted to add her own content (like I'm magic or something!) to the web site I was to create for her.

My solution was a word press blog! It gave her the power to write content in a "WORD" like evironment and still she able to manage other authors and other fairly powerful features if she ever suddenly got computer savy. - (I think she died actually poor lady).

If a blog is too simple for you I recommend Xoops!

Does your web host have "Cpanel" as your account management interface? (I chercked out thier web site it does NOT appear so) it allows you to install things like Xoops and blogs with a "one click" interface. It's also praticlly tthe industry standard). Waaaaay easy! Many web hosts have this software, heck I can even give you a discounted account on my server or you can look at just about any web host out there.

[ncriptide]

You guys are great!

Thanks so much for all the helpful advice and recommendations. I'm going to take a look at everyone of the resources you've listed.

[Syspira]

Yes, wordpress can be really good if it's predominantly a blog-focussed site, and it's flexible enough that it doesn't have to be just a blog. There are various add-ons that can give it other features, though it's still primarily a blogging platform. And it certainly beats the hell out of anything else for ease of use -- I set my not-at-all-technical mom up with a wordpress blog, and by the time I checked in to see whether she'd like a tutorial on it, she'd already made several posts and was completely at ease with it.

Xoops I initially liked -- it's more flexible than Mambo/Joomla (Joomla's a branch off the Mambo project, with a firmer commitment to open source), though not as much so as Drupal, and it's easier to use than either of those. But I have some reservations about it now, after creating a site with it for some clients earlier this year. They've complained to me a lot about it being buggy and unstable, and said that sometimes articles they post disappear for no apparent reason, or weird formatting glitches appear and disappear more or less randomly.

I don't know how much of this may be due to them unknowingly doing something wrong, but it has made me a bit wary of Xoops, and I'm currently trying to decide whether to upgrade their site to Xoops 2.2 and hope that that fixes some of the problems they're having (though I'm edgy about that since 2.2 is basically a dead version and development is now going in a different direction, but it's the only alternative to the version they now have, and the only way to get it to use a different WYSIWYG editor than Koivi, which I think may be partly what's causing their problems), or just convert the whole thing over to Joomla instead. Which would be a headache, but at least no one I've set up a Joomla or Mambo site for has ever complained about it being unstable.

[TrafficProducer]

simple php: IDE Sould help you with PHP

PHP DESIGNER is a freeware IDE for coding PHP for both professional and novice alike.

Your Host may have some ready to use CMS. Check out your cPanel.