Hi


I developed many websites and make a living off two, where lawyers pay to list their firm as advertisement, and a third for my real estate investing career (my main career)


I was looking to start a web design company as many people have asked me to do a website for them in the past, but I've declined.


The main reason was I didn't want to have to be constantly maintaing sites for other people.


But I think maybe a content management system or a web cms, at that may be the answer to that problem.


Firstly, do I understand correctly when I think a cms can be deployed on an existing website built using dreamweaver, that would then allow non-technical users (the people I design sites for) to access the cms and make changes to the website?


For example, could I install a cms on my already existing website, www.yourhouseintocash.com and have it look exactly thesame as it does now, but let someone, or even me have the ability to make changes to the site without using/knowing dreamweaver or another program similiar to dreamweaver?


Secondly, if my thinking is correct, can anyone recommend a good web cms that would suit my purposes and doesn't take a rocket scientist with 3 phds to figure out how to install, and use?


I think opencms.org looks pretty good (and like it would suit my purpose) but the support and instructions on setting it up are written for geniuses and therefore completely 100% useless to me.


Lastly, if my thinking on a cms is not quite correct, can someone recommend something that would suit my purpose? IE, allowing non technical people to make changes to their site after I've designed it for them in dreamweaver.


Thank you so much!

If you have any experience with server-side programming (php or asp), you could easily build a simple cms that could be integrated into existing sites to be included with new sites. Most all of the sites I design have a custom CMS that I designed.

There are a few good CMSs out there. I really dont have much insight into the subject since I always code my own CMSs, but there is one I have been thinking about trying:

http://cmsfromscratch.com/

Good Luck

Sam

I use joomal and am pretty happy about it. Only problem I can think about joomla is that there is a lurning curve which may not suit everybody. Once you are compftable with it, joomla is easy to manage and there are tons of good clean templates available.

Are you familiar with or have you considered WordPress as a CMS? Most people are unaware that you can use WordPress as a CMS for creating web pages or writing blog posts and have the ability to use one of those Pages as the websites front page.

Wordpress seems to work great as a cms... I am making my personal website based soley on wordpress and wp plugins. There are a number of great plugins out there.

It will take work to convert your layout over to most CMS scripts. That website you listed barely has a layout though so it shouldnt matter one way or the other.

I am assuming you do not know PHP so just use word press like they suggested or something similar and it wont take any time at all.