[TheWern]

Hi Gurus,

I have been asked by a couple of people how they can do a site which will allow them to do their own content management, I have only ever done one site like that for which I needed to create 'update' pages. These would update the datbase via php and mysql. This is fine except that it takes a long time and costs the site owner quite a bit. Mostly I deal with entry level customers and very basic sites, but these can be labour intensive as I have to update TONS of photos for them.

I have been told of Joomla nad had a quick look. It seems to me that you have to use their hosting, you will use basic templates and it doesnt sound like what I want.

I did find some software package a while ago that makes it easier but was $700 (if I remember correctly).

Can anybody please give me some advice as to what would be the most cost effective way of supplying Content Management to basic sites, and/or any software package recommendations.

Thanks so much,

Sandy

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I like Concrete5. It's open source, free and pretty straight up.
Johanna

[Johanna]

I like Concrete5. It's open source, free and pretty straight up.
Johanna

[admin]

You can host Joomla on any LAMP server (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP). It's free to download and free to use. There are also a number free and cheap skins to customize it. The backend should be pretty easy for most people to understand, however as it is a powerful program the learning curve to master is rather steep.

You might also want to consider Wordpress. Again it will work on any LAMP server, is free, easy to setup and very flexible / customizable. There are a HUGE number of plugins and themes available to customize it to almost any need (blog, content management, images...).

[AstraNut]

Pretty much every paid hosting service offers several Content Management Systems (CMS) in the cPanel which can be installed on the web site itself from the same Control Panel. Possibly you could make it simpler and just have a text/html file updated by using Server Side Includes where you just update/overwrite the include file itself. This may not be as useful for what you are asking, but is great for updating content that appears on many pages. Possibly repeating links:

Free Content Management Systems:

Finally, a free and truly simple CMS: http://www.cushycms.com/
http://www.pligg.com/
http://drupal.org/
http://opensourcecms.com/
http://www.joomla.org/

File Thingie?(small web-based file manager written in PHP. It is intended for those who need to give others access to a part of their server's file system when FTP is not practical): http://www.solitude.dk/filethingie/

These may already be ready to install in the cPanel.