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for the designer who has no choice but must learn CMS

I'm not familiar with DW, last time I built a website was in GoLive.

I've only ever designed 2 websites, one for a paying client through my wife's designed business, and one for a hobby. Both times I used Golive in CS2.

(Bark! Bark!!! Dog of a program... buggy and kept crashing... and when I asked for help, the code nearly caused people here to mess their pants!) :eek:
 
eclipse said:
I'm not familiar with DW, last time I built a website was in GoLive.

I've only ever designed 2 websites, one for a paying client through my wife's designed business, and one for a hobby. Both times I used Golive in CS2.

(Bark! Bark!!! Dog of a program... buggy and kept crashing... and when I asked for help, the code nearly caused people here to mess their pants!) :eek:
Click to expand...

That's why Adobe kept DW instead of GL :)

I'm quite intrigued by the notion of DW having a cut down CMS built in. May have to investigate further.
 
Anyone got a list of tutorials I'd need to learn to understand all this "back-end" service provision and implementation? I need to get my head around CMS (currently learning Joomla), but also how that relates to the server, security, etc. What else?
 
eclipse said:
Anyone got a list of tutorials I'd need to learn to understand all this "back-end" service provision and implementation? I need to get my head around CMS (currently learning Joomla), but also how that relates to the server, security, etc. What else?
Click to expand...

Tutorials? hmm, try books actually. The tutorials will only give you snippets at a time and for various contexts. A book will take you through things in a more streamlined manner if you're really wanting to learn the backend side of things. Though there is some online stuff that's quite good. If I get a chance later I'll track to track down my own list that I have that may help you take one step further.
 
this is a great thread. i'm pretty much in the same boat as the OP. i'm a designer and have yet learned how to use CMS. i think it would help a lot for me setting up various clients and such, but i have difficulty in programming as well. i think i'm decent at it, but sometimes the logic is way over my head too :)
 
yup, so it means for a web designer, he got this 2 option:
a) learn to build his/her own CMS
b) use a pre-build CMS (drupal or joomla)

Correct?
 
there is now a third option....

wheelhot said:
yup, so it means for a web designer, he got this 2 option:
a) learn to build his/her own CMS
b) use a pre-build CMS (drupal or joomla)

Correct?
Click to expand...
cushycms.....so far it answers most of my needs and my clients...and we dont need templates......
 
wheelhot said:
yup, so it means for a web designer, he got this 2 option:
a) learn to build his/her own CMS
b) use a pre-build CMS (drupal or joomla)

Correct?
Click to expand...

drupal and joomla are good for sites that need that power, but for small to medium sites they are really not necessary.

I linked previously to CMS from Scratch and Cushy, the former of which I use regularly and the later looks very good if your comfortable with the functionality depending on a third-party website.
 
Are you saying that by learning Joomla, I'm learning a more complicated CMS? That there are easier ones out there (like this Cushy thing?)

Blaaaaargh! Anyway, Joomla seems to be becoming an "industry standard" or at least a very common software aid. My church, activist friends, web-host and others I know are all starting to use it and recommend it.

MAN I've got a learning curve (and mid-life crisis thing going as well!) :rolleyes:
 
As for easier CMS, yes there definitely are easier ones out there. I have never used Joomla but I am pretty sure it compares to Drupal. I use Drupal. For many smaller clients though I am sure wordpress would be better. Wordpress is not really known as full on CMS but rather blogging software. But don't let that 'blogging' part scare you off, it is plenty capable and is plenty easier to wrap your head around than drupal.

For complete ease of use I would go with textpattern. Really ...it's easy.
Though I have heard Expression Engine is really good/easy too.

I have heard it said elsewhere and I must agree:

With Drupal and Joomla you are having to fit your code (xhtml/css) on top of a CMS With Textpattern and Expression Engine you are injecting the CMS into your code.
 
Aaah, this is great, I'm seeing some pretty good CMS here. And yeah, Joomla and Drupal is sort of competing each other because of their capabilities.

Cushycms, cmsfromscratch, textpattern, expression engine. Sweet, now I know that they are other good CMS out there :D

You guys know how to build a informative website (with links and all) but have a page that is powered by Wordpress? I installed WordPress onto my computer and managed to get it running but I'm not sure how to build some external links to static part (information that won't get updated often) of my website.
 
werther said:
With Drupal and Joomla you are having to fit your code (xhtml/css) on top of a CMS With Textpattern and Expression Engine you are injecting the CMS into your code.
Click to expand...

Can you tell me more about this from a pro & con side? I'm trying to get my head around both web design from a graphic designer's POV (my wife is the designer), back end stuff, and now CMS stuff to keep the clients happy.

If I wanted to design a spiffy new design/look in Dreamweaver or something, and then bring my extra bits and pieces into Joomla, what difference does your paragraph above really make? (Sorry for my newbie question being so.... newbie. :eek:)

I mean, I thought the last thing you wanted to do was inject your CMS directly into the code... having the database of "articles" display THROUGH the CMS interpretted by the code/look/surface skin is the way to very quickly move the "look" of the website around without having to change stacks of code? As per this video?

http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=FiYcdY9owOk
 
About a year ago i was in a similar situation. A client needed to update a website without any web skills/ftp programs/nothing. Just a web browser.

It took me a day to build a basic cms using php and mysql (having no prior knowledge) and i'm pretty stupid so if i can do it I'm pretty sure you can.
 
honestly since you are established and are looking at getting a steady flow of work I see 2 options for you.

your first option is to hire a part time (or freelance) developer.
your second option is to hire a developer to create the CMS you and your clients' needs.

Once you have a developer at your fingertips the possibilities are endless. You will be able to design anything you want without having to worry about the code that you will have to write.

Obviously if you are financially stable and financially able to hire someone that would be the best option. If the funds are not avail then hiring a company or a freelancer to develop the CMS for you will give you the flexibility you need at this point.

I find that most CMS's will limit your creative ability, which is why a custom CMS is always preferable. Just remember if you freelance the CMS creation out make sure you settle for nothing less than what YOU need. This way you are comfortable using it. Just make sure you thought out what you will need out of it before you hire someone.
 
Me1000 said:
honestly since you are established and are looking at getting a steady flow of work I see 2 options for you.

your first option is to hire a part time (or freelance) developer.
your second option is to hire a developer to create the CMS you and your clients' needs.

Once you have a developer at your fingertips the possibilities are endless. You will be able to design anything you want without having to worry about the code that you will have to write.

Obviously if you are financially stable and financially able to hire someone that would be the best option. If the funds are not avail then hiring a company or a freelancer to develop the CMS for you will give you the flexibility you need at this point.

I find that most CMS's will limit your creative ability, which is why a custom CMS is always preferable. Just remember if you freelance the CMS creation out make sure you settle for nothing less than what YOU need. This way you are comfortable using it. Just make sure you thought out what you will need out of it before you hire someone.
Click to expand...

Creating a CMS from scratch and doing it properly could take several thousand hours to do it properly. Good luck on that one.
 
ChicoWeb said:
Creating a CMS from scratch and doing it properly could take several thousand hours to do it properly. Good luck on that one.
Click to expand...

If you are hosting it on your own servers everything using API calls, etc... yeah it could.

Creating a CMS simple enough for a noob to use, with a WYSIWYG editor, yet powerful enough to be dynamic for each website with a little bit of CSS is not.
It will take a few hundred hours, yes, but if it were to take a few thousand hours then you are adding things which most clients will never need or use.

This is why you must plan out what you want in your CMS, find what you need VS what you want.
 
The problem I have with Drupal, and I am sure Joomla is not much different, is the code bloat associated with it. With Drupal there is a module called Views 2 which is unbelievable in how much time it saves it saves building queries. But the amount of DIVs it produces is ridiculous.

I am not the most semantic web designer out there, I mean I'll stick an extra DIV in some places just for a background image, but to have 5 DIVs just to nest one table of data seems to really destroy the argument for separating presentation.

I am kinda with the idea of building your own. It is not as hard as you think. I have done as Coulter said with one book on PHP and MySQL. What I produced certainly wasn't anything compared to Joomla etc., but it gave me an understanding of how things get done and gave me the confidence in tweaking someone elses code.
 
Yup, that's why building your own CMS is the way to go. But I'll go with my ideology that the way how web coding is going (designing and developing) is not the right way to go. There are too many things for a beginner to learn and it will take them years to master it. This is not a healthy practice cause it will just kill some person's interest. Besides, with CSS and HTML not being standardize across all browsers (so I wonder what is the real purpose of W3G) it gives headache and make web development much slower.

I wonder if they will be one day where there will be only 1 language to learn which is able to handle the content, design and server interaction. All of the different categories (content, design, server interaction) will exist in separate files except that its syntax will be almost the same.

And I BOOed Ballmer for still wanting to keep their sucky IE Trident engine, why keep updating things that is so outdated and crappy to begin with while they are other great open sources engine out there that solves a lot of problem? Its not like Trident is as the same standard as Presto (which is as good as WebKit or Gecko)
 
I've not played with DW4 yet, what are the CMS features that set it apart from say Joomla?

I can see a problem already... the wiki says

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Contribute

Cons
Contribute is a client-side tool. This means that you will only be able to edit a website on a desktop that has Contribute.
Contribute requires that every user be licensed. This can be a costly process if there are a lot of users set to update a website.
Click to expand...

Isn't the whole point of a good CMS that the client has just already paid you to design a workable and attractive website but just wants to update a few pages now and then?

Now they have to buy the software as well?
 
Contribute has been around for quite awhile. From what I understand it, working it tandem with DW, lets you mark certain elements on pages as editable. Then the client can edit those pages through the client contribute software on his/her own workstation.

That you have to pay for the 'CMS' is not atypical. You would just include it in the cost of your design/development package. It is no different than when Chicoweb prices a client that needs to use his CMS. Except the CMS (I assume) is in 'the cloud' not on the client's computer.
 
eclipse said:
I've not played with DW4 yet, what are the CMS features that set it apart from say Joomla?

I can see a problem already... the wiki says

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adobe_Contribute



Isn't the whole point of a good CMS that the client has just already paid you to design a workable and attractive website but just wants to update a few pages now and then?

Now they have to buy the software as well?
Click to expand...

Contribute, is a stand alone application. It's a content editor, and I wouldn't call it a Content Management System. What if a client is at home, or their employees are on a different computer and wants to modify their website? Standalone applications are going away. Why do you think Google came out with their own browser?

A Content Management System controls a variety of aspects of content (including navigational items, links, meta data, media, etc), not just "edits" content. You can create a FCK editor page and allow people to modify their content rapidly, but that's not a "system". Content Management Systems ( Or Solutions ) are very detailed and control much more. What happens when the client changes the link to a page, wants to add in a special form, or wants to start selling products? This can't be handled by a content editor.

I could go on and on for hours about Content Management as both of my businesses rely heavily on advancing CMS technology.

@Me1000: I agree, you could get pretty far on several hundred hours, but a lot of what's learned and needed comes from client experiences, surveys, and feedback that has taken us years to advance to the point at which we are with our system.

We actually have two flavors of our CMS, one is as you stated API driven and works great for small clients who want a lot of bang for the buck, and it allows us to keep improving their CMS experiences by constantly making changes at the database level and all users get that extra functionality. Just this week we added a new UPS module that now everyone can take advantage of.

The second of our CMS framework works strictly on an individuals site and works with their own database. This framework looks A LOT like our other GUI, but functions behind the scenes very differently. This framework is highly customizable, and fits clients with bigger budgets and special needs that go beyond content management and basic e-commerce. The clients that we can't categorize as needing a "one size fits all" CMS.

Again, there are several thousands of hours into each of them, but the value is rapid deployment. This is what fits our business needs, and everyone is going to be different.

My $0.02 USD
 
I was in the same boat, though I was the one who wanted to have some type of CMS solution, not my clients. I was able to learn how to use things like Joomla, but I never liked them.

So I just designed the sites how I (or my clients) wanted them, then I taught myself php/mysql and used that to power them. From there, it was easy to build an admin part of the website so the clients could go in and make changes, add pages, etc. It's not really advanced, but it works for my needs.
 
How long did it take to learn php/mysql? I'm just wondering what I need to learn to design basic 'brochure' websites that might include a little blogging and other predictable updates from clients?
 
werther said:
The problem I have with Drupal, and I am sure Joomla is not much different, is the code bloat associated with it. With Drupal there is a module called Views 2 which is unbelievable in how much time it saves it saves building queries. But the amount of DIVs it produces is ridiculous.

I am not the most semantic web designer out there, I mean I'll stick an extra DIV in some places just for a background image, but to have 5 DIVs just to nest one table of data seems to really destroy the argument for separating presentation..
Click to expand...

understood... but as a designer one of the things that I like about Drupal is that nearly every item on the page is addressable via CSS. In this way Drupal's code has never limited my design.. the more hooks, the more flexibility.

why write your own CMS to solve this when you can just extend VIEWS to create cleaner (or more project specific) output?
 
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