CMS Made Simple Forums

I just noticed a comment on the CMS Critic site (go vote for CMSms) about in-page editing for CMSms.

Does anyone actually like in-page editing?

I was talked into using Drupal for a few projects by an over zealous developer of mine and I regret every minute of it. Mostly because of the mix of back and front end editing.

I develop sites with a very heavy focus on client usability. The drupal sites we did have a much heavier support cost to me because clients find it confusing and hard to use. They argue that I cannot charge for support if I didn't educate them properly in the first place. I did, but I can see their point, it's just not end-user friendly.

This has never happened with CMSms - ever. We offer a half hour to one hour training for the person that will update the site (usually an admin person or family member of the client).

With just the CSMms permissions we manage to create an environment that a client quickly feels confident using, but at the same time, they can't screw it up. (Thankyou MicroTiny).

The key, though, is having one window with the admin open, and another window with the site open.

Drupal on the other hand is all over the place. In-page editing for page content, but backend editing for anything else. If you want to see what your changes look like without the editing toolbars - you have to open another browser for that. Most clients don't have a second browser. Not a client friendly work flow.

Sorry, this is a bit of a rant - but CMSms doesn't need in-page editing. In my opinion, if configured correctly, CMSms is the most intuitive CMS out there for end users - the clients that use it every day.

Simon66

Thank you, and I agree with every sentence of your statement.

In my not so humble opinion: In-page editing sounds like the best thing since sliced bread, until you start to think about it.

Also 'in-page editing' is great for somebody that thinks about design, and appearance, and cross browser issues, and image issues and a thousand other things, but is not useful for the average non-technical person that wants to spend as little time as possible adding new information to his website so that he can get back to filling orders or answering calls.

That's what we design CMSMS for. We expect the person who develops the site to be a professional.... but that professional is often off working on the next website when the latest news needs to be added, so the staff should be able to do it easily, quickly, and simply.

Simon66 wrote:Does anyone actually like in-page editing?

No. Well, I don't. Seems like a good idea until it comes to implementation. The demonstrations I have seen are mostly very simple layouts.

Drew McLellan wrote a good discussion of this in his short article The Lure of On-page Editing:
http://allinthehead.com/retro/357/the-l ... ge-editing

In-page editing is to me, the stuff of nightmares.

It's bad enough when you work furiously to get the functionality and design right for all types of devices and consistent with the business's branding, then the client adds formatting to their content. I guess it looks OK them on their screen.

Suddenly your beautiful home page looks like a ransom note.

I'm with you Simon66 and Calguy. Keep the admin in admin and limit the editor's options for formatting the content. KISS principle works for me!

Having said that, my clients own their websites and I always give at least one person full admin rights. Usually I'm able to scare them off changing anything except the content.

psy

Any new function is interesting, but after testing it in production, if it takes you much time to update your site (or for your client), considere it as a gadget and not a tool!

Dear Simon66,

+1 on not wanting/needing in-page editing.

I have been editing the content of a Drupal site developed by a different company and have grown at least 5 extra gray hairs since i started!!
Besides the regular "in-page editing", there are also quotes & calendar items.
To edit these, I need to select a menu where all content (all pages for the 3 languages + the events and quotes, ...) are show in the same list, ordered by the date you added it by...

I seriously hope Drupal has some modules that help to structure and separate the content in their version of "backend editing".
On the website i'm working in, this clearly isn't the case...

Oh yes, in advance: my apologies for the rant............
Nice to get it off my chest though!
Not a big fan of "in-page" editing.
Not a big fan of "throw everything on a big pile" editing.
Big fan of CMSMS way of editing.

Greetings,
Manuel

In page editing can be a cool thing...

But the nature of cmsms templates makes templating so flexible that this feature would take a lot of efforts to achieve, and maybe won´t be something that everybody will fell confortable to use.

I will leave a suggestion, thats doable and would make a difference.

Create html hooks on content blocks, content areas and even plugins. This html hooks can make links appear, so if I´m on a news page, a top bar(like wordpress) appears letting me go to the news edit page. If a global content block, let me go to edit this content block, on admin not on the frontend..

My 2 cents

I have built, over the years, literally dozens of website with CMS Made Simple. Some were converted from other CSMs like Joomla (aka the rust bucket), Drupal, even Plone, all with unhappy users, frustrated by the sheer difficulty to maintain their sites.

Every client is happy with them now, since I provide them with the right admin interface suited for their tasks, together with a few, simple screencasts - that takes only minutes to be prepare - on how to add and manage pages, news and such.

For me in-page editing is a big no-no