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Hello all.
I've been going through some things lately, one of which is starting my own company for websites development. If everything goes well I will start my own business.
Right now I am looking for an administration system that will enable my client to update the content of his website on his own. I know there is something liks CMS400 but it's price is way beyond my capability.
Can anyone recommend such a software?
Thanks,
Availor.
Typo 3 is one of the best CMS programs I have ever worked with.
See also the Wikipedia article about Content Management Systems.
Regards,
Remi
Thanks a lot Remi ! I will try that out.
Will my clients be able to edit the content of their sites by themselves?
Thanks Remi i'll take a look at that too.
I was going to have a read up on macromedia contibute as it came with studio 8, has anyone used it?
Manny2k
The idea behind a CMS is the separation of the design and the content of a website:
- A experienced Web-Expert does the setup of the CMS (installation, configuration). After that, the Webdesigner creates a good Design for the pages in form of templates together with stylesheets, images, flash, whatever...
- The customer uses the CMS to insert, update and delete new content together with some comfortable tools, like a WYSIWYG editor, functions to upload images, make a part of the content visible or invisible, ...
Remi
"A Content Management System (CMS) differs from website builders like Microsoft FrontPage or Macromedia Dreamweaver. A CMS allows non-technical users to make changes to an existing website with little or no training."
source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_con...agement_system
"A Content Management System (CMS) is a piece of software that runs on a server. Typically a database application, a CMS makes it easy to publish and administrate content.
Some basic features that are common to all CMSes:
Separation of content, structure and design
A CMS improves the lifecycle of your website for years to come. The "look and feel" of your site can be changed or relaunched, leaving existing content and page architecture untouched. No need to worry about copying and pasting content into another site, simply publish your new design and the CMS will pull the content into the new look.
Easy content production, no programming skills required
If you can use a computer, you can manage the content for your website. Using a graphical user interface, authors can simply create text, insert images an multimedia files, schedule content (and much more) to build and maintain a dynamic website.
This is especially true if you take advantage of TYPO3's server-side graphics generation for making image menus, graphical headlines, etc.
Just imagine: You will never need to make another menu button again, or pay a web designer to do it for you. Each time you add or change a page, the menu will automatically update to reflect the change. Having to learn or purchasing photo editing software will not be necessary. You can upload images straight to the web from your digital camera / DV camera or a scanner."
source: http://www.typo3.com/What_is_a_CMS.1351.0.html
Thanks again Remi, you really help me out there!
The idea is that I build a website (design and template) and the client will upload the content without my help.
Yes, that's excactly the reason to use a CMS, Availor.
But be warned: Typo 3 is a complex system and you need a little bit time to learn all the things behind Typo 3. There are also other Content Management Systems available with no such steep learning curves, but in the end Typo 3 is the master of feature richness and flexibility.
You'll find some Typo 3 tutorials videos here: http://typo3.org/documentation/videos/
Regards,
Remi
Hi Availor,
Since you are using a lot of flash,you might be interesting in this
http://www.flashcontentmanager.com/
Using in dynamic flash websites
Gr,Hans
Thanks haakoo, that seems to be a really unique feature.
Manny, I heard of contribute but I've never used it. If you have dreamweaver the ftp and synchronisation are already built in so there's no need of using any other software.
I have use "Contribute & Co- Author" and I found that contribute was the easiest to use, Co-Author came free with GoLive ver.6 and above. Thought contribute was overpriced in the UK as most of my clients stated that £70 was too much and I could do 3 updates for the same price. Maybe it ways the way i sold it to them.
Hi Availor. That's great you're going to start your own business. Especially when you're younger - No children (I'm guessing from your being in school and your photo in drag :) )and plenty of energy to burn the midnight oil! :D
There are some very good points about CMS from everyone. I would point out a few things. From my experience and knowing my clients, most CMS apps go way over the top on trying to provide to much and often overwhelm the client with how to use the darn thing. They're way to confusing for the lay person. I ended up building my own simpler CMS for my clients. It was very easy to use for them.
I do need to point out one thing though. Most of your clients won't know jack about optimizing images and such. In essence they'll be more than happy to upload a photo say for example that will be over a 1 meg in size not knowing they created an issue for the visitors to the website. I've had all kinds of issues with my clients and CMS apps.
In essence, be prepared to do a lot of hand holding and customer support.
Best of luck! ;)
I agree with Red 100%. It sounds an excellent selling point that the site your supplying is dynamic and is client editable but can/do/will they want to do this?
How much is this option going to cost the client (+ your additional workload)?
Will the client use it/be able to use it/be bothered to learn it?
Are you cutting off your nose to spite your face by offering this? After all you're restricting future work via updates if you allow the client to do it themselves.
As red also points out, if the client uploads a 50 x 50 pixel image of 5Mbs does this reflect on your business capabilities?
Don't get me wrong. I invariably offer the client dynamic content updating but I find it's often beyond the clients wishes / ability / drive to use this feature.
Besides mastering the complexity of a CMS you have to well be aware that you might be responsible for a lot of things if you offer your customers more than layout and graphics ...
If you offer a complete package, will you offer the hosting too or will your customers do that. Will you be the one who installs and maintains the CMS ?
Let me just point out a few things to consider:
- who is responsible for keeping the whole system running?
- who takes care of backup (and can do restores)?
- who takes care of security?
- how is data between authoring and live system being transfered?
- who is responsible that the complete site complies with according laws?
When you run a CMS, there is no way around getting strong knowledge about the underlying architecture. Otherwise you wont be able to take care of vital parts like performance or security.
Egg:
After several projects where companies spent a fortune to get a CMS where every employee is able to create their own pages easily, I can safely say:
Only 1 out of 100 authors really likes to create a web page. Most of them start liking the idea but quickly find out that there is no CMS where you can produce good looking results without knowing what you do and without knowledge about graphics and writing for the internet.
That and the fact that it is easy to destroy any corporate identity with a couple of clicks lets most of the authors hand back the work to the specialists.
With workflows, they can easily enter a text they want to publish, then route the result to a web pro that can produce a good looking page out of it.
In the end, a CMS produces MORE work for you than the other way round.
The exception might be very small customers or single persons with high web affinity..
I personally did the step Availor is considering a long time ago and didnt ever regret.
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As Remi already mentioned Typo3, I will add a free CMS that scales pretty well and runs on the platform of the evil empire :).
AxCMS from Axinom (www.axinom.com) is a CMS based on the dotnet framework 3.
Juergen
Thanks for the help guys. The cms is meant for people who know their way in web developing. My purpose is to provide a better website building solutions with better graphics and such. Once we make the website it's up to the client if he wants to pay a small monthly fee for it's update, or he is capable of doing it himself (maybe he has a friend who knows a little about this). In this way I give my client another option.
Besides, in these businesses it's essential to be able to do these things even if there is no actual demand. I am aware that most of my potential clients know nothing of this but some have kids who do and they prefer to take the responsibility of it. I explain the client "it's up to you now" or "you can pay a monthly fee". It's just another way of marketing.
For example - updating/deleting a list of workers in a company can be a tideous work I prefer the client will do himself. It does not require images and almost anyone with little knowledge in the English language can deal with it.
I have searched the web for more information and installed some of the cms there are. I found the easiest to use was e107 http://e107.org/news.php
There are also
http://mamboserver.com/ , http://www.joomla.org/ , http://www.xoops.org/ and http://www.phpnuke.org/
The problem with all these systems is that they let me choose from very basic and standart templates.
Does anyone know of a different cms that will enable me to build my website on my own and then connect it to the management system?
I made my own using FCKEditor and Coldfusion. I can put any design I want around it and I kept it simple for the client to use.
FCKEditor is an open source editor project that comes in many flavors. PHP, ASP, Javascript, Coldfusion etc. Here's a link to it: http://www.fckeditor.net/
Thanks, you gave me a different way of thinking now... will see how it goes and if I can cope with this (I guess it requires php/asp programming).
The simple templates, the Content Management Systems uses in their tutorials are only for learning. For example the Typo 3 tutorials: The used examples in the beginners tutorials are really ugly. But it's only for learning purposes. If you know the principles of Typo 3, you'll create your own template together with TemplaVoila and you're able to create the best websites. The only problem is, to investigate the time to learn and understand the fundamentals of Typo 3.Quote:
Originally Posted by Availor
Remi
Thank you remi, I will give it a try.
By the way, this is the website I've made and I want them to have control over it.
Very good site Availor. You need to upload the AC_RunActiveContent.js to your server, it's creating an error.
Why have you got white jaggies around your header logo?
Nice site, Availor,
besides the javascript error Egg mentioned, there is something wrong with social.php. Just look at the content in the middle.
A good idea especially when others work on the same site would be to separate the design form the content completely. Sometimes you use classes/id's and sometimes you embed the styles into the content which makes it hard to read and maintain.
Who is that woman ? I cant read anything I fear.
Juergen