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Thread: Transitioning a website to a CMS
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Thread Status: Active Total posts in this thread: 10
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cchagnon
Newbie Joined: Jan 8, 2007 Post Count: 37 Status: Offline |
Hi everyone, I have recently designed a website filmfalmouth.com for my local chamber and I want to move it to a CMS in the future. Any recommendations for the easiest to learn. I've played it Joomla and see CMS Made Simple, but unsure which is the best or if another exist. I also want to be able to install is successfully on Godaddy or Bluehost. |
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LSW
Advanced Member USA Joined: Nov 27, 2003 Post Count: 6287 Status: Offline |
CMSMadeSimple is popular here, it would be a good choice for the average web site. If as this is a chamber, it would need more enterprise type support and plug-ins, Joomla or Drupal may be better. They are all fairly easy. I have never transferred a design to any of them, but I would guess that CMSMS would be the better choice. I have transferred designs to Quick and Easy CMS and only took LSW off it as it became more a blog. It is however shareware, but made with accessibility in mind by the originator of the Guild of Accessible Web Designers. IF they are willing to pay, have a look at QnECMS. If not ask yourself this... is ease of transfer more important or the type of plugins you can get. Have a look through Joomla! and Drupal and see what is offered to add to it. Drupal however uses their own language which is needed to do any serious modification to it. So does it need to be a big site sort of company oriented and need lots of add-ons... or just easy to transfer to. Have a look at my CMS thread . ---------------------------------------- Gu.aal kwsh� yak'�i it�akw ijeet wugood�k LSW-WebDesign.com |
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falkencreative
Advanced Member USA Joined: Aug 14, 2007 Post Count: 1129 Status: Offline |
I've found CMSMS easy to learn, and my clients have appreciated how straight-forward the administration section is. If you are looking for something that will easily allow you to edit content, images, etc, I'd suggest CMSMS. ---------------------------------------- Benjamin Falk | student : designer : developer Twitter: falkencreative ---------------------------------------- [Edit 1 times, last edit by falkencreative at Dec 15, 2008 1:08:07 PM] |
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cchagnon
Newbie Joined: Jan 8, 2007 Post Count: 37 Status: Offline |
Thanks for the recommendations. I like your website is it powered by CMS MS or just plain xhtml and css? Any good tutorials you recommend as well. |
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falkencreative
Advanced Member USA Joined: Aug 14, 2007 Post Count: 1129 Status: Offline |
@cchagnon - You didn't specify... I think you were talking to me... At the moment, my website isn't powered by CMSMS. It may be eventually in the future... I am working on a redesign at the moment, but am trying my hand at Wordpress instead. A couple recent sites I've worked on that use CMSMS (remove spaces): -- http://www.et hschoi rs.com -- http://www.lind say.falkend ev.com I believe Susie's site is also done using CMSMS (http://www.au xanoc reative.com). I really don't know any tutorials for it, but the support forums are helpful and there is quite a bit of documentation. There are a couple people here who work a lot with CMSMS, so feel free to post any questions if you have them. ---------------------------------------- Benjamin Falk | student : designer : developer Twitter: falkencreative ---------------------------------------- [Edit 1 times, last edit by falkencreative at Dec 15, 2008 12:20:53 PM] |
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cchagnon
Newbie Joined: Jan 8, 2007 Post Count: 37 Status: Offline |
Why are you using wordpress for your site? Is it more then a blog program? |
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lwsimon
Advanced Member US Joined: Sep 24, 2007 Post Count: 396 Status: Offline |
CMSMS is great for accessibility-minded developers, and gives great freedom for devs with PHP experience. Its is easy to set up, but more difficult to set it up in a way that's hard for your user to break. I've not seen any better though, so take it for what's its worth. CMSMS is lightweight, and great for smaller sites. I have two complaints about it, which won't mean much to you're not planning on developing your own modules. The first is that the API is not documented outside the code. This isn't a *bad* thing, as writing modules requires you to become more familiar with the API, and makes your code more efficient. It is slower to learn, however. The second is that it outputs XHTML by default. You can change this by use custom templates for all the modules you use, but it is kinda a pain, and some of the core outputs XHTML. In particular, the $CMSModule->Create_____ functions output XHTML, and they are used in the logic of most modules. You would have to wade around in the PHP some to correct this, which in turn means you'd have to do this with every upgrade. So, if you aren't a module developer, and you don't mind coding in XHTML (or having your pages not validate sometimes), CMSMS is just about the perfect solution. Otherwise, be aware of the above, and dive in! ----------------------------------------  Simple is better. |
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falkencreative
Advanced Member USA Joined: Aug 14, 2007 Post Count: 1129 Status: Offline |
Why are you using wordpress for your site? Is it more then a blog program? To be honest, it's just that I don't have that much experience working with Wordpress, and figure it's a good marketable skill to have. It is more intended for blogs, though it can be used as a CMS as well (though, as I am finding, it requires some work-arounds). Doing my site using CMSMS would be a simpler option, and probably would give me roughly the same functionality, but I won't learn Wordpress that way. ---------------------------------------- Benjamin Falk | student : designer : developer Twitter: falkencreative |
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LSW
Advanced Member USA Joined: Nov 27, 2003 Post Count: 6287 Status: Offline |
If you mean mine... I used QnECMS for it originally. However I no longer do freelance web design, so need no portfolio etc. and as I basically just write about web accessibility and web design sometimes... it is a blog so a switched to a dedicated blog software. But yea, the line between CMS and Blogs has faded. You can use a Blog program for a CMS and most CMS supply blog functionality and RSS feeds. But I am a purist and tend to use software for what it was meant to do. ---------------------------------------- Gu.aal kwsh� yak'�i it�akw ijeet wugood�k LSW-WebDesign.com |
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Susie
Advanced Member Ohio, USA Joined: May 30, 2004 Post Count: 2677 Status: Offline |
Yep, my site is using CMS MS. If you peek at it and click on my portfolio, you'll see a list of the sites I've developed using CMS MS, too. John/shelfimage developed his site with it as well, I believe. I love CMS MS and Wordpress both, but lately I've been wanting to get into Expression Engine. It's not free, though, and so far I can't justify the cost. So, I'll stick with these 2 for now. Let us know if you have questions! |
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