CMS Solutions

Soldato
Joined
25 Sep 2003
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Location
Manchester
I'm getting a lot of people wanting content management on their websites and was wondering what others used for content management in their CSS/HTML websites? Basically so they can update or change text in one or two pages.

I know of the free snippetmaster but was wondering if there are better ones, either open source or commercial?
 
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I've used Joomla a fair bit but prefer to just build my own css/html for simple websites and then have a plugin type of software to do the basic content management.

Joomla is great but I find trying to build the articles (pages) a bit annoying with the wysiwig and html builder bit in the back end. Would much rather do it in Dreamweaver where I can do my lovely divs and the like. :)

Maybe Joomla is good for this but I don't know it well enough??
 
I would look at using CMSMS or MODx. Both of these are fast CMS systems with MOD-rewrite from the off. We are using MODx quite a lot now it can work with DIVs and CSS - no problems. It is totally dynamic and has an excellent back office.

You need to do some programming to make it sing, and we have a dev team to do that. But for a simple site (perhaps 10 pages) it's perfect.

here's a very straightforward site that we built for a local residents association - using MODx - http://www.cloughhall.co.uk/

CMSMS is also quite good, from what people have said. It's not got the power or customisation potential as MODx but this is fine for most sites.
 
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Wordpress.

I know some people just would have said 'err what??', but I've used it as a CMS on a number of different websites and it's brilliant.

If you make your own theme then it looks nothing like a blog and by using pages instead of posts it's just like any other cms. It allows you to add a blog really easily (obviously) which is good for SEO and of course has RSS built right in. The amount of plugins for wordpress is amazing and you can use different themes for different pages so there's no problem if you're trying to do something a bit unusual.

For the client, editing the pages once the site is up couldn't be more simple and generally the backend is far more simple than other dedicated CMS solutions.

Google also loves wordpress. With a few SEO plugins, wordpress sites have consistently great SERPs
 
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Wordpress.

I know some people just would have said 'err what??', but I've used it as a CMS on a number of different websites and it's brilliant.

If you make your own theme then it looks nothing like a blog and by using pages instead of posts it's just like any other cms. It allows you to add a blog really easily (obviously) which is good for SEO and of course has RSS built right in. The amount of plugins for wordpress is amazing and you can use different themes for different pages so there's no problem if you're trying to do something a bit unusual.

For the client, editing the pages once the site is up couldn't be more simple and generally the backend is far more simple than other dedicated CMS solutions.

Google also loves wordpress. With a few SEO plugins, wordpress sites have consistently great SERPs

How do you get on adding jscript functionality to certain pages in wordpress? for example a javaticker?

I find WP strips out a lot of the content, making it OK for text and images but for introducing functionality it has its limitations.
 
If you only want it on one page, you either write it in to the theme using a slightly different theme for that page or, more easily, if you edit the page in code view rather than normal view I'm pretty sure you can stick any code you'd want in there (obviously you can't edit the header that way). As far as I've seen it only strips content if you're editing the page in standard view - although I've only put php in actual 'page content' before (everything else going in to the theme file directly).

It's rare that you'd want a ticker, using your example, in the middle of the page, more likely wanting it as a consistent feature at the top or bottom of each page. In that case you'd just stick it in the theme (header file specifically).
 
Ive been checking out what everyone has been saying, thanks for all the info. In this instance I'm going with Joomla and the JCE plugin, seems to give more functionality to the editing. However, there are going to be other websites that will benefit from the posted solutions so will be using some of them soon.

Thanks all!!
 
I would suggest ExpressionEngine or CMS Made Simple.

I personally didn't like how joomla works and mark up it's pages.
 
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