CMS for beginners - trying to get my head around it

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#90777 29-Sep-2011 09:43

Hi folks,

I'm not sure if I'm posting in the right forum for this, so feel free to point me in the right direction.

I have a question about CMS. I built this very simple website about a year ago for a hobby group I belong to - it's nothing fancy, just 10 pages with text and images, and a couple of audio tracks. The site gets updated about once a month. I no longer look after the site, it's maintenance has been handed over to another volunteer.

He is recommending that we invest in CMS. Now, I don't really understand what CMS is, but it seems like overkill to invest time and money in creating it for a site that is so small. Am I right?

The person currently maintaining the site says that to update the text and images monthly takes him days of tedious manual updating (of links etc I assume). But I built that whole site in, like, 2 hours so I don't get why it's taking him so long.

So my questions are: 1) Would you recommend CMS for a small site with limited functions and
2) Is it reasonable that small changes to 10 web pages is taking someone days to complete?

Thanks a lot for any advice you can give me, including any other forums that I should post this to.

Have a good one
:)

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#527085 29-Sep-2011 09:53

It's probably not the most appropriate forum, especially since CMS packages span multiple platforms, but not to worry - it's a good start.

To answer your questions:

1. Yes, I would still recommend CMS for small sites. There are reasons to use CMS other than the amount of content on the site.

2. There is up-front time investment in migrating a site to a CMS. It depends how much of his time is spent on it though. If he is doing this full time then I'd think 10 days is far too much for a 10 page site. The other factor which may impact is how rational is the site design? A good CMS implementation relies fairly heavily on rationalised design and structure of the pages.

Back in the days of creating websites ad-hoc I was also able to churn them out quickly. Then I started getting requests to update other people's creation and discovered it took me a while to figure out their design, and rationale for what they have done/implemented. This is where CMS can be useful - a rational design/layout makes it easier to update content, while keeping the "chrome" out of your way.

Hope that helps. You've opened a gigantic new door for yourself here... it leads to a massive warehouse full of goodies should you wish to jump in! :)

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#527088 29-Sep-2011 10:02

Thanks for your response, dpw.

What do you mean by keeping the "chrome" out of the way?

The site design is reasonably rational, I think :) It's just a home page with 9 links to the other 9 pages, and every page links to every other page (ie, at the top of every page there is an identical nav bar so you don't have to go back to the home page every time).

Every page has the same layout with just different images and text.

At the bottom of every page there is a "footer" of 5 links like 'Contact Us'.

Does this sound like what you mean by rational design/layout?

oxnsox

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#527093 29-Sep-2011 10:10

I don't know what documentation you provided to the new guy, buy maybe a simple documented explanation of the site design and the how-to-of-updating may make it an easier task for him??

But everyone wants to stamp their mark on things they're involved with.... and maybe this is their way

xpd

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#527095 29-Sep-2011 10:11

There are a huge amount of different CMS systems out there, so saying "get a CMS" isnt really helpful to you - if its just a basic information site with occasional updates, then something like WordPress would be fine (I use it for my sites) - takes minutes to put in a new post with images etc.

XPD / Gavin

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#527108 29-Sep-2011 10:33

MacGraphics:
What do you mean by keeping the "chrome" out of the way?

I'm talking about things common across multiple pages - basically the concept of masterpage (in ASP.NET webforms) or layouts (in Rails and ASP.NET MVC)

The site design is reasonably rational, I think :) It's just a home page with 9 links to the other 9 pages, and every page links to every other page (ie, at the top of every page there is an identical nav bar so you don't have to go back to the home page every time).

Every page has the same layout with just different images and text.

At the bottom of every page there is a "footer" of 5 links like 'Contact Us'.

Does this sound like what you mean by rational design/layout?

Sounds like a good start :)

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#527160 29-Sep-2011 12:35

I hate "CMS" as a description, it's massively broad and IMHO is applied as a name by marketers and designers to things that it shouldn't be applied to.

What you want is better termed as "online page editing". That's it. An "administration area" for your website that provides a WYSI(A)WYG (what you see is (almost) what you get) editor that can create, edit, and delete pages. Couple that with the use of "includes" so you're not "editing the menu on every page", just including (eg) menu.html and editing your menu just once in that file.

With that said. You could consider a blog format, Wordpress being the obvious choice.

I'm not a fan (actually I HATE the idea) of using blog (and forum) software to provide more functions than blogging (and foruming) but in this case, I suspect it might be a decent solution for you as I suspect that your hobby website would fit quite well with a blog paradigm.

It's free, can be installed on your suitable hosting in no-time-flat (many web hosts will have click-to-install systems including it), has piles of decent looking designs you can just click-to-install from it's admin area, and then click-to-customise, and it's not very difficult to use - http://www.wordpress.org/

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#527169 29-Sep-2011 12:42

Out of interest there are quite a few free CMS applications out there, I think Microsoft have a page that links to many of them. The main issue I have with some of them after getting them installed is customising the look and feel which can be quite difficult in some cases. However, once that is done, usually it should just be a matter of business as usual.

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#527174 29-Sep-2011 12:47

Thanks so much for your feedback. So many differing opinions and options! But thanks for sharing as it will help me to make a decision about where we go to from here.

Re Wordpress-type sites - I've thought about these and although this is for a "hobby" group, it is actually a performing arts organisation and we need a certain level of "professional" look. We want to impress audiences and sponsors in what is a very competitive market (not many arts dollars to go around and plenty of competition for audiences to choose from!).

What about something like Freeparking? Anyone used this before? I really like the idea of the "editing online" function, that would mean that more than one person can help with the maintenance and updating, right?

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#527181 29-Sep-2011 12:52

Also it is all very well setting up a CMS, however it also needs updating when the latest secuirty patches come out, and the templates may need updating when it is done. Some of the cheap hosts also run CMS websites very slowely, especially if they are one of the bargain basement ones that host thousands of websites on a single server. If you built the website in dreamweaver, it is very easy to update it in dreamweaver too, as it is just a wysiwyg system. There are also many manyu free CMSs out there.

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#527193 29-Sep-2011 13:01

I use CMS' on even the smallest sites these days. Once you get your head around how they are structured it only take another 30mins or so to install one and it makes the long term extendability and maintenance ease of your site much better.

personally I use Joomla but checkout wordpress (super simple apparently) and Drupal (also popular)

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#527211 29-Sep-2011 13:31

Zeon,

I've just looked at Joomla.org and seen some really great sites and it seems pretty easy to use. I read the technical requirements page, and didn't really follow it to be honest! Is it actually a case of downloading Joomla and then cracking into it or will I need to get any other programs to go with it?

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#527224 29-Sep-2011 14:08

You will need a webhost that supports MySQL and PHP which most do these days (webhosts, not your ISP's free webspace).

Saying Wordpress dosent look professional is bit of a lame excuse not to look at it really, it comes down to the time you put into configuring it etc. Ive seen some websites running Wordpress and you'd swear it was some other package.

You can spend $$$$ on a "comemrcial" CMS package and it will look crap compared to a WP/Joomla/Drupal site that someones spent a little bit of time on customising the look.

XPD / Gavin

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#527226 29-Sep-2011 14:16

xpd, can you tell me some of the sites you've seen running wordpress that look good?

dpw

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#527232 29-Sep-2011 14:26

MacGraphics: xpd, can you tell me some of the sites you've seen running wordpress that look good?

First thing first... please remember Google is your friend!

Then there's always Wordpress website itself - check it out!

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#527234 29-Sep-2011 14:33

My site for starters lol....

But theres thousands of them, you can also find "professional" themes for a few dollars as well, just Google "wordpress themes".

XPD / Gavin

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