Content Management

AndyBorzi · 24 Mar 2006 at 11:08

The head at my wifes school (she is a teacher not a student

) found out that I designed the website for our part-time business and now wants me to redesign theirs..eek! I don't mind cos I enjoy getting my hands dirty with stuff I don't have a clue about!!

I haven't really got any ideas about what the site is to look like yet but it has been mentioned that they possibly want the ability to update. i.e news, events etc. Obviously I can update the pages manually which may not be practical in the long term.

Assuming their ISP/Webhost is PHP and SQL enabled, is WordPress the way to go for this? (The school will not want to spend any money on software/licensing!)

If the main page is a standard html page, can it receive excerpts from the WordPress pages i.e display 'Latest News'?

I have no PHP and a little SQL (from SQL Server not MySql) knowledge, will I need to learn it for WordPress or can I get away with plugins etc?

Thanks

AB

Lt. Manlove · 24 Mar 2006 at 11:31

AndyBorzi said:
If the main page is a standard html page, can it receive excerpts from the WordPress pages i.e display 'Latest News'?

Probably with some work. Anything is possible with Wordpress, although a blogging style website may not be ideal for the school.

AndyBorzi · 24 Mar 2006 at 11:41

Lt. Manlove said:
Probably with some work. Anything is possible with Wordpress, although a blogging style website may not be ideal for the school.

I agree. It was only initial thoughts really. I hadn't intended to use Wordress across the whole site, just the news/events pages and style it as close to the main site as possible.

I don't really know exactly what they want yet, but I want to be able to offer ideas and possible solutions with regards to the content management.

Mr_L · 24 Mar 2006 at 11:43

You could modify Wordpress or use it in such a way that it wouldn't have to represent a blog. It's a pretty flexible system and you can do a lot ot things with it.

Another option would be textpattern, which I've heard good things about. That is more like a typical CMS that you seem to be after. I've had no experience of it though, so I can't give a first hand account of how good or bad it is.

AndyBorzi · 24 Mar 2006 at 12:01

Mr_L said:
You could modify Wordpress or use it in such a way that it wouldn't have to represent a blog. It's a pretty flexible system and you can do a lot ot things with it.

Another option would be textpattern, which I've heard good things about. That is more like a typical CMS that you seem to be after. I've had no experience of it though, so I can't give a first hand account of how good or bad it is.

Thanks for that Mr_L. It does seem more geared towards the updaters than WordPress is. Hopefully the interface is 'idiot' proof!! - Don't really fancy writing an Idiots Guide for the users!!

If anyone else has any ideas that would be great but it looks (on first glance) that textpattern seems to be the way to go.

*EDIT* CuteNews also looks ok.... see:

http://forums.overclockers.co.uk/showthread.php?t=17553668
AB