[solved] Do pages I have already produced have to be converted to php?

[hc]

After reading further on CMSMS it seems to be saying (and I may be reading it wrong) that all site pages on which you would want a User to be able to change content on have to be added to CMSMS and taken out of the current IDE environment I am using. Is this right?

I have numerous pages for different sites, all of which I created as static XHTML pages with CSS.  The pages are fine and the creation process is fine.  What I want a CMS for is just a tool for the users, which they can access from their computers, to allow selected users to change the content on the "existing" pages.  I don't need another development environment for creating original sites, and the User is not to have "access" to the original code.  I thought that what a CMS does is let them, viewing a 'copy' of their pages, list the sections where, and the content which, they want to change and then after sending it, the CMS does the entering of new data into the 'master' without further involvement of the User and then the next time they go to their public page on the web - there are their changes.

Have I got this process wrong?

Thanks,
hc

[kermit]

generally if one uses a cms (content management system), they are using it to manage the layout, content and features of an entire site; not just one or two specific pages. you can set up cmsms for editing of only a couple pages if you really want.. you will lose many of the benefits of using a cms though, such as site-wide templates, automatic menu generation, etc.

take your existing xhtml/css static site...

the layout and design becomes a template(s) and associated stylesheet(s).

the area of the layout that has the page's content is replaced by {content} tag in your template. that identifies the part of the page which is editable from the back-end.

users edit or add pages, the cms takes the {content} for that page and wraps the template around it when serving the page to web site visitors.

see "I'm a Designer" in the wiki for more information about templates and how to create them. there are some ready-made examples on the themes site.

the menu is automatically generated using menu templates for the code, which you can style with css. for most, the default menu template, which is based on unordered lists -- nesting them for multiple levels, works just fine.. just style the output however you want.

cmsms uses the smarty templating engine. page templates, menu templates, and templates for various modules, are all just smarty templates.

if you haven't yet.. take a look at the opensourcecms.com demo of cmsms or set up your own test site or server (away from your existing sites) so you can see, first-hand, how cmsms works and what it can offer you.

if you find that a content management system isn't what you're looking for.... take a look at editthispage or adobe contribute for a couple of alternatives.

[Pierre M.]

Hello,

here is a reading suggestion. I hope it answers your questions.

Pierre M.

[hc]

OK, thanks for the above info and I did read the links you guys provided.

I tried the demo and I went ahead and downloaded and installed CMSMS at the host where I have *my* pages, but I got a "403: Forbidden" message, but assuming that can be cleared up simply enough, all of this brought up another larger question for me... lets say I have 30 clients with separate domains (sites) and potentially different host, and each has from 1 to 15 pages that I produce for them, are they ALL using this *same* installation of CMSMS?  Is each client and their pages essentially a separate "Group" accessible only by *their* password within this one installation, or is it potentially that this CMSMS software will have to be installed on 30 different computers? I know this may seem like a stupid question to those who have a lot of experience with this, but this is all new to me.  I can code in different programming languages, but the *logistics* of all this seems confusing to me.

Thanks again,
hc

[Pierre M.]

Hello,

multisite or multidomain is not more on the 2.0 roadmap.
This has been answered several times in the forum.
See http://forum.cmsmadesimple.org/index.ph ... l#msg86075

Pierre M.