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for the designer who has no choice but must learn CMS

Expresion Engine

http://expressionengine.com may be worth a look

It's not free but can be worthwhile for commercial projects, has good separation of code and design via the built-in templating system and the code easily can be customized using PHP plugins and modules.

Pricing:

- "Core" version - free
- Personal: $100 lifetime license then $20/year for updates
- Commercial: US$250 lifetime license then $40/year updates

Version 2.0 to be based on CodeIgniter due in the near future.

I find EE much easier to work with than Drupal for non-UTF-8 encoded projects sites (e.g. Japanese cell sites).

Otherwise I generally use WordPress where it suits or CodeIgniter for custom applications (by Ellis Labs, the EE developers, but free).
 
lucidmedia said:
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?
Click to expand...

No, I agree with you wholeheartedly. It's kind of a guilty pleasure. With the plethora of divs provided by views I can easily add elements of design (background-images, etc), without having to muck around with views/theme.
 
My conclusion......

so...i've read, i've tried and I've learned.....I now work with CSS and am getting rid of my "table habit"....got to know abit about php in the process

and i'm sold on CushyCMS as my CMS....

  • it doesnt do everything, but its does about 90% of what my clients need.
  • the developers are quite active and attentive to our needs, so i see a good future.
  • the learning curve is minimal (like 5 minutes)
  • It has zero affect upon my design, not in the beginning and not near the end when i might decide to make some structural changes.
  • no server needs other than xhtml, which isnt really a requirement
  • no interference with google...as there is no database
  • no lost time on database "business".....
_____

so thats my conclusion......its not a "programmer conclusion" but its one for us designers, we get to spend our time on design and not additional time on programming or working around the CMS.
 
cushycms does look nice. I am glad you found your CMS. I think I will keep it (cushycms) in mind for smaller sites.
 
I'm having a "best CMS" conversation over here if anyone wants to head in that direction, but for the purposes of this thread let me as a newcomer just say....

so...i've read, i've tried and I've learned.....I now work with CSS and am getting rid of my "table habit"....got to know abit about php in the process
Click to expand...

Noooooooooooo! :eek:
I related to Pelsar as a "designer, non-geek" that just wanted the thing to be easy. I can't understand why we have to work in code, and why the WYSIWYG stuff can't produce "rock-solid code" (as the adds for DWCS4 say).

If for time purposes I'm forced to choose between learning 3 or 4 different coding languages (HTML, CSS and php and something else) or trusting WYSIWYG editors to do it for me while I learn where to "copy and paste" code, then I know which sounds more attractive to us beginners. If I can just learn Joomla and then copy and paste the relevant DW generated code from one spot into another spot, I'm home, free, FREE! Mwa ha, ha haaaaaaar! :D:D (Insert maniacal panicked laughter).

Pelsar, how's the cushy going? Can you one day show us a site you've done in cushy... just link to it here please? I'd love to see it. Do you develop it in Photoshop, then DW, then Cushy?
 
eclips its pretty straight forward....

eclipse said:
Pelsar, how's the cushy going? Can you one day show us a site you've done in cushy... just link to it here please? I'd love to see it. Do you develop it in Photoshop, then DW, then Cushy?
Click to expand...

the process is photoshop/image ready (soon to be fireworks)....output as divs....into DV....modify the css sections (remove backgrounds, put in text etc make the CSS, put on line....get the ok from the client..then put in the "cushy" code before the text blocks and picts (i believe they call them "tags"). I've put up two small sites..and soon will be placing a larger 20+ page on line. You design first without the cushy tags as there is no design limitations.

btw they have great response to questions and and interesting "feedback area"

http://cushycms.uservoice.com/


____________
I set up a demo for my clients in an email blast to show them how it works:

http://www.vistaspinner.com/spinner-emailblast/Nov0908/
dont forget the access codes: demo@vistaspinner.com / demo
 
the $28/month...

eclipse said:
But what's the $28 a month about? Joomla and Drupal are free.
Click to expand...

the program and use are free....the monthly fee hides the 'cushycms" from your clients and they let you "brand" the website thats used for the changes.

some clients wouldnt care that its "cushycms" for others, the less sophisticated types, they may not like the idea that a third party is "involved" on their website, hence the branding....

and i understand that some users charge for the CMS use....(i'm looking into it with some of my clients....)
 
Great thread! I can relate to the OP's issues.

I sort of came at this the same way. I am much more graphics minded (photographer by trade) and really don't know much in the way of real coding.

I started with and then dumped Dreamweaver a few years ago. I am now pretty proficient at hand creating pages with strict valid XHTML and CSS. I learned how to look at something I created with Photoshop and carve it up into the XHMTL pages and CSS.

Writing PHP and Javascript I can't do though. I have made some attempts at reading this stuff but I just get blocked. But I too needed to work with dynamic content. I looked into a lot of CMS platforms, downloaded like eight of them and tested them locally using MAMP on my Mac. I also looked at how well supported the support forums were. Some forums were very skimpy, some too huge, some seemed intimidating for newbies and some poorly structured.

I like Wordpress as a blog platform, but I wanted to create my own designs using my XHTML and CSS methods and then "make it all work with the CMS." In short I was looking for a designer's CMS. Some CMS platforms had templates/themes you could download but for the most part it seemed like most people would resort to backwards engineering these themes: hardly custom web design.

In the end I settled on MODx as my CMS. Its very cool and adaptable. It does not get in my way and allows me to build sites first and then make it all work with the CMS. The support forum is the right size for me: it's a nice mix of expert help, friendly to newbies, and prompt responses. MODx is much more powerful than the very easy "light" CMS systems but easier to wrap your head around than Joomla etc...
 
The thing that impressed me about Joomla is the fact that:-
1. Most of my greenie activist groups are starting to use it so I need to use it anyway
2. Many reviews of it say there's no real php coding necessary, and new mods are coming out thick and fast that make Joomla even easier to learn. (EG: Soon the Lynda.com training on uploading Joomla will be outdated because there will be an upload wizard and we won't have to edit any text on the config page. Edits are coming out so fast that the Lynda training can't keep up!)
3. While it might be a bit to get one's head around at the beginning, the long term rewards are (apparently) well worth it — kind of like learning CSS and XHTML in the first place (but easier to learn.) If you invested the time necessary to know CSS and XHTML, then Joomla would be easy!
4. The number of big organisations using it impressed me as well.

I'm glad there are so many free CMS's out there all competing, because it means that one day we'll get better and better software. I've seen Joomla evolve heaps in the few months I've been interested in it, and there's all sorts of improvements on the way with Joomla 1.6 coming out soon.

All I can say is, well done on learning the code... I've finally capitulated but there's no way I can learn via books and manuals.

I'm watching all the video's on Lynda.com, and they're slowly helping me put it all together in my over-worked brain. :eek:
 
Cs4?

Anyone use the Dreamweaver CS4 mini-CMS for their clients to enter stuff? How basic is it? Does it allow clients to enter their "articles" or "pages" with "tags" (labels, subject fields, whatever you want to call it from either Blogger or Wordpress or Joomla days). How easy is it to use?

I'm having a nightmare time just editing Beez in Joomla. I want a horizontal log-in bar, and it's causing me grief, even with the Signal Log module add-on.

http://extensions.joomla.org/extensions/access-&-security/user-authentication/4181/details
 
well chaps/chappettes (not necessarily in that order)

I've been looking for an all in one solution for the non code head and this is the best I've come across:

http://businesscatalyst.com/

Does everything: shop, blog, forum, static pages. Even has a Dreamweaver plugin for template design.

drawback - it's a remotely hosted monthly package.

If those Open source chaps ever developed something like this we'd be laughing.
 
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