CMS Made Simple Forums

I have done a couple of brochure websites in xhtml & CSS. I am tuned into accessibility and the arguments about not using tables. I have some potentially new customers (one a charity I am doing voluntary stuff for) who want to edit the pages themselves. So I am looking for a cms. I am very new to stuff like PHP and would prefer to steer clear from learning it seriously. I have boiled my CMS choice down to CMSMS and Drupal so am in a 2nd phase of deciding. So I need some help in deciding. Some of my queries are and ask of CMSMS which I would appreciate some help with:

1. is there a good book tutorial that starts from the concepts up?
2. if other users can update a site is this done from any browser window (i.e. no special requirements on their PC)?
3. can the updaters be controlled as to what part of the page(s) they can change (e.g. only text in #content and not CSS)?
4. can I ignore what type of host is used i.e. goes anywhere?
5. does the CMS handle all the remote site updating/check in/out say like dreamweaver?
6. can I use tableless design even with add-ons/plug-ins?

Thanks for your time.

1. Check out the documentation part of this site, it can help you along, but once you read that you dont need it anymore, CMSMS is so simple

2. Depends on the editor youre using the standard FCKeditor support IE 6 & 7, Firefox, Opera and Safari if im correct. But no software needed other then a modern browser

3. Yes, you have control of users rights.

4. Almost anywhere, you`ll need PHP 5.x (4.x will do now but cmsms 2.0 will require 5.x) MySQL and some image tools like GD. Almost any host will support that.

5.  cmsms doesnt support dreamweaver, people can just login to the website and change/update content there.

6. You can use both tables and/or CSS , thats really up to you.

Good luck, hope this helps

Hello,

I don't know Drupal (only the name). I'd say that CMSms pretty feets what you describe. Please see charities/churches sites in the ShowOff. I repeat that CMSms doesn't require any PHP knowledge.

1. About book/tutorial/concepts : you already know everything (templating, xhtml, css...) as you are an experienced website maker. As Signex writes, it is "so simple" ; I like this very much of CMSms : you don't need to learn the product, just use it.
2. The admin browser requires Javascript activated. The visitor's one doesn't.
3. Of course. LOL
5. May be there is a plugin or module called "external editor" which you can use to edit stylesheets and so inside Dreamwaver. But I'm sure you'll prefer simplicity.

Have fun testing and please report us the result : what you like, what you dislike etc...

PM

Thanks, that clears some things up. I have now read the whole manual.

1. I  guess the model is that the website is on one server i.e. the 'remote' site. So there is no copy on ones laptop which is used to do updates and test before upload or check-in (as for example in the Dreamweaver model). Have I understood this right?

2. Is it usual/possible to run a local/remote model to save constant access over the internet by designing/testing locally?

3. Is the editor some software I have to load on my PC (I see there are different editors on offer even a xhtml strict module)?

Just trying to clear in my mind how it all works. Does anyone know of a good tutorial or book?

It looks like you are in the same situation I was in, trying to find a website system that can simply be updated by non technical people.  I've looked at a number of systems including drupal, mambo etc and others.  I evenyually found cmsms and it does what I want.  I have set up editors so that they can add pages.  The menu looks after itself although they can alter positions of menu items also.  More importantly they can't fiddle with site settings so the look of the site stays the same, as you or your client first intended.

Clients edit/create pages with the built in editor when they log into the admin side of the site.  You can add names and give them various rights, as I mentioned above.  No need to put anything on your PC.

The site is held on a webserver.  You need to find a hosting company that supports php and mysql.  I use siteground.com.

If you wish to try and test things out then you can create pages but not make them public untill you're happy with them.  Otherwise you will have to have a local webserver on you PC and install CMCMS onto that.  I've done that this week and am editing various templates from the CMSMS website then I'll upload the appropriate files to the production site.

Its easy to install Xampp which installs apache server, mysql and php for you.  http://www.apachefriends.org/en/xampp.html

I'm not a techie but I'm manageing to set up and alter stuff with a bit of thought and trial and error which I wasn't able to do with the other systems.  So I would recommend CMSMS.

Agreed with all above. I also selected CMS Made Simple specifically for a client who wanted the ability to edit pages themselves. I've worked with Joomla before and know a little about Drupal. They're very flexible systems, but require a lot of work to set up and are too complicated for non-technical clients who just want to "add a page." I think one of the strong suits of CMSMS is that it's based on pages in a hierarchy. It mirrors the way most people think about a website, and offers a lot of flexibility in an intuitive manner.

I do all my initial design locally. You can design HTML page templates wiith accompanying CSS and images on your local PC as usual. It's a lot easier to fiddle with all the nuances of CSS in real time that way. When I'm happy with the template, I just copy and paste the HTML as a template to CMSMS, do the same with the CSS stylesheet, and upload the images. After that, I do all the remaining work directly in CMSMS.

You might take a look at the demo system at OpenSourceCMS. You can login as an administrator and get a feel for how it works.

http://opensourcecms.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=452