CMS - yes, that old chestnut

I tried searching for 'CMS' in this forum but got nothing back. Now I know full well that this is a regular topic of discussion so I don't know what is going wrong there...

Anyway, for the first time I am needing to integrate a CMS into a website. This is not something I have done before so can I ask the community to comment on:

1) Can any CMS be integrated into a Xara developed website or do some of them require total control of the content (i.e. they must generate the ENTIRE page) and would therefore not be suitable?

2) Which CMSs have people successfully used with a Xara a site?

3) Which CMS have proven a problem?

CMS questions seem to pop up regularly as more people come to realise how good XWD is, maybe a sticky thread where community experience could be gathered would be in order?

Cheers
Grant

I think I'm right in saying you need at least 4 characters for the search to work on TG

[and sorry but I know I know nothing helpful about CMS]

With some precautions there is possibility to fit generated website into template - but some hacking is always required (as for now) - and in fact, if You have some experience with html, it's just easier to make it "by hand".

Xara positions all elements using pixel accuracy - which is fine, but then to modify it "just a little" is impossible without changing everything.

Grant, Good questions and you're right this would make a good sticky or FAQ addition.

CMS systems are basically pulling information (website content) from a database and presenting it onto a web page with HTML tags and CSS formating. As well as retrieveing content they can also provide the complete site structure and navigation. In variably they work using HTML/CSS templates that are customised from the database when the user requests the page.

Because they rely on using HTML/CSS for presentation the only way to use them with Xara is to "delegate" the content presentation away from Xara, so in effect Xara is not contributing to the web page display that is fabricated using a CMS. The only way to do that is to use things such as HTML placeholders, iframes and perhaps javascript to allow the inclusion of CMS content. In effect you are excluding Xara from controlling a section of your page.

Looking at the navigational sides of CMS systems, the situation is even worse - you would need to use Xara to build navigation templates for the CMS - something that it would really not be suited for (it works with static, not dynamic content).

So, for populating a page Xara and a CMS can work, but effectively you are delegating part ofthe page away from Xara to the CMS.
For building an entire CMS driven website Xara would be a pain and if you are capable of doing that you'd soon realise you'd be better off not using Xara for that purpose.

I think that only very simplistic use of a CMS is possible with Xara. Many people equate the value of a CMS to filling in some content, but in reality they are automated publishing systems that allow sophisticated control of publishing, collaboration between people, security and a seperation between the way things are shown and what is shown.

I'm working on a cms at the moment and I'm trying to bridge the Xara/CMS gap as best I can. I think I have a good setup going that allows Xara and CMS to blend well together and as long as you know the limitations of both you can get some good results. My approach is to maintain the ease and flexability of designing and publishing straight from xara and then have the cms use these published pages as templates for dynamic pages/content. So you can create pages pretty much as normal in xara and if you want dynamic content just add a placeholder with simple code like {page_content}

You can have a look at an example of my efforts here http://www.talkgraphics.com/showthre...cart-%28wip%29

Paul - thanks for your comments.
xtom - cheers, I shall check this out!