How to create a simple dynamic web page that your client can update / amend.

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Originally Posted by Egg Bramhill

Clients are strange beings, yes they always want dynamic pages at the outset but in reallity I find that half of them don't use it once it's set up, often due to time restaints/staff workload

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That's exactly my experience as well, and my experience dates back to the 1990s when the web was in its infancy and a CMS was unheard of outside of an IBM mainframe: half of them don't use it once it's set up. So you have wasted all that time and energy doing so and teaching them to use it. Doesn't matter if you got paid for it. It's so much better to provide a solution tailored to the customer than a solution that suits the designer's needs to "build it and they will come".

Frank - I deleted your response to a deleted spam post.

But it was a great response anyway Frank ;)

There are actually a lot of other benefits that we get by using Joomla. Don't get me wrong about my posts regarding this - we use Xara every day and even sometimes for simple websites and especially splash pages, but there are a lot of reasons why Joomla fits the bill. Here are a few:

1. When a client wants something like a calendar or blog or other component, we can easily add it to their existing site and don't have to make compromises to either redirect them off-site or use something that doesn't quite "fit" in the site, via iFrames or whatever other way is needed.

2. When a client wants updates but they don't want to do them themselves or they don't have time or whatever, anyone in my office is able to make the changes to their site. When I used to do html sites, I was the only one who could make the changes because no one else is adept at the html code. With Xara, I've found that sites can be a bit difficult to change when it's anything much more than a few basic text changes. There are a lot of parts that Xara relies on having changed at once and some of the exported things have to be tweaked a bit (like when a background image doesn't get "squashed" enough and it needs to be replaced at the FTP level just as one example) - many of these things are just as or ore difficult for the others in my office as the Joomla updates.

3. When the client actually DOES want to make changes (such as adding new calendar entries, new blog posts, adding new images to their gallery, etc) - even though you are right that it's generally less often than they may have originally intended- it's possible. If we do the site in Xara, it simply can't be done. By the time we build the site and make ongoing changes for them, the cost of the site is similar on either platform.

The cases where we use Xara are definitely fewer, but we still do occasionally do so - splash pages, very basic brochure sites, sites that have no need for changes - such as those that will only be up for a short time, like some political election sites and such, and sites that need to be really oddly formatted that just don't fit into what would be a "standard layout" kind of site, where it's more difficult to get the template built in a system like Joomla (or basic html or whatever for that matter).

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Originally Posted by gwpriester

Frank - I deleted your response to a deleted spam post.

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As long as my pal Jamie Foxx saw it is what counts :rules

I got this working with an Xara site and using a google doc image. The client is thrilled it is so easy. It took me a while to get the settings straight and proper link in the Xara code but it works fine. I think this tip is invaluable, thanks again.

Glad to hear that Rich. Cheers.