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Gregg Morris
1,935 PointsChoosing the right CMS - help!
Hello folks,
I'm proud to say that I've bagged my very first web design project for a local antiques shop (it's a brochure site not an e-commerce one) and one of their requests is to manage the site themselves after launch. The problem I have is that I'm not really sure what the best CMS is to use. I know there are is a Wordpress section in Treehouse, however I'm wondering if there is something better / simpler / easier to use or possibly not for that matter?! I'm going to have to learn from scratch in order to put the site into a CMS, so am looking for the most straight forward and pain free option going for a beginner like me.
In addition to this quandary, I've also been approached to design another website (yay!) for another local antiques shop but this time it's an e-commerce site. So the CMS I choose needs to accommodate both brochure and e-commerces sites.
This also got me thinking about going forward and whether it is possible to brand the chosen CMS with my logo/colours etc so the client is none the wiser about how my CMS is actually Wordpress for example?
(I've assumed that it would be a massive, hugely expensive and time consuming task to make my own CMS and it's better to utilise one of the CMS's already out there?!)
In addition, I would love to offer hosting too, so essentially my clients pay me a monthly subscription (similar to subscription based sites like Treehouse, Squarespace etc) in order to be keep updating their sites.
Is there something out there that would do all this?!
Also, my latest client told me about this company that gave them a ridiculously expensive quote - I looked at their site and the features they offer are pretty darn good and I would like to offer the same features from "my" CMS if possible? Their link is:
http://www.antiqueswebdesign.com/web-design-for-antiques-dealers.asp
Any help, advice, guidance would be much appreciated. And if I've missed any vital info please shout and I will do my best to shed more light on the matter.
Thanks in advance! Gregg
4 Answers
Wayne Priestley
19,579 PointsHi Gregg,
Without hesitation id say Pagelime cms cheap (as in from free) so so easy to implement, and for the client to use.
Hope this helps you.
As far as hosting goes, do you mean hosting their actual websites or their cms on your server. If its their website, there are a few posts in the forum regarding hosting companies. I think it is a personal choice depending on what features your looking for, my choice is 1&1.co.uk.
Riley Hilliard
Courses Plus Student 17,771 PointsIn your situation I would choose wordpress for a few reasons: Wordpress powers more than 60 million websites, so you know it is a tested and used system that works. Treehouse has a wordpress lesson, so you can get up to speed with it quickly. While I am not sure why you need to brand it other than wordpress, you probably can if you really wanted to. The client shouldnt really care what CMS you are using for them, they should be technically paying to the building of a website with an integrated CMS whether thats Wordpress, Drupal, or Pagelime.
James Barnett
39,199 PointsYou might be able to use Perch for this
Tom Bedford
15,645 Points+1 for Perch - it is easy to implement, brandable and has apps to use PayPal or and Foxycart for selling items.
For the e-commerce site you might want to look at Shopify if you haven't done anything like that before. They have a developer program where you can make the store then hand it over to the client when ready. It is free to use while in development until the shop opens to start selling.
Adam Fichman
9,502 PointsI just mentioned this in a previous post, I highly recommend trying Barley. It is EXTREMELY easy to use. The hosted version is great. It is as easy as clicking on paragraph and typing. It is by far the easiest content editor for clients. As for theme development, it is extremely simple. No complicated PHP or anything. If you can use HTML and CSS then you can very easily take your static site and convert it to a Barley template. It allows for great customization and allows you to not worry about the client destroying the design when they update it.
Edit: Barley does not allow you to brand their CMS as your own at this time. And it is not really an E-Commerce solution, but with a plugin you can provide basic e-commerce functionality. Read here