I have a question. Pretty soon I will be entering into a freelance web design business. With the business, one of the quotes is something like "simple site with a simple CMS system". And of course, I need a simple CMS that I can easily plug into a site (or more correctly, have a site plugged into). So here are my two options:

1) Get a pre-made CMS and heavily modify it.
2) Build my own CMS.

I know that almost every one would choose option 2, but I am not very experienced in php, and without a very detailed tutorial on php and databases, I would be unable to do it.

So, Y'all, (Excuse me, I'm Texan) please post your opinions on what you think what I should do.

If you think I should go with option 1,
Please give some links on different CMS's.
Maybe some tips on how I can modify them.

If you think I should go with option 2,
Please give me some links to very detailed tutorials.
If you wrote the tutorial yourself, maybe give me some tips?

And of course, the other option that I left out is to go ahead and post on whatever you think I need to know.

Thanks a million,
- Steve

I would suggest using an existing CMS.

My personal choice is WordPress. Even though it's a blogging software, many people have used it as a CMS quite successfully. If you're not afraid of code this shouldn't be a big problem as it has a wonderful plugin API. Search Google for "WordPress as a CMS" and you'll find lots of information about what you need to do.

Other options include Drupal and Joomla. They are also good, though they can sometimes be slower than WordPress in my experience.

Thanks for the reply Will. I have used Wordpress numerous times before, and for a project like this it is simply overkill.
One thing that I forgot to mention:

I don't want anything like Wordpress, Drupal, or Joomla. I just want something with simple page listing, page addition, and page modification. I can do all the little stuff like uploading forms, login authentication and stuff like that. Oh, and did I mention I need a WYSIWYG? That is very important as well.

Thanks again,
- Steve

OK, if you're wanting really simple functionality you should probably build it yourself so you can get the exact feature set you want. I'm afraid I don't know of any tutorials that specifically address this, but looking for tutorials on basic Database management should get you on the right track. Additionally there are numerous JavaScript based WYSIWYG editors around on the internet. Do a google search and you should get enough results to get you started.

I think you should go with option (1)

I would like to make a few suggestions of CMS php Scripts - but, if you do not mind, I would like to wait until I receive the response from your reply.

Do you use cPanel Web Hosting? or Who is your web hosting company?

I have been trying to find a nice CMS also; I am in the process of testing testing a new CMS script on a website as we speak. I noticed your post so I thought I would offer advice. Are you looking for a Free CMS script or are you leaving all options open?

I would be happy to show you a few examples of nice php CMS scripts that I just recently tried, including the one I just found tonight about an hour before I found this post. Feel free to contact me or just reply when you are available. I should have a few examples of options to show you at that time.

Kind Regards,

Thanks for the reply... right now I am using HostMonster with a cPanel interface. I would like a CMS script that is free, yes. And preferably with no copyright jargon. But if it has some I suppose that's okay.

Thanks,
- Steve

You might find this useful.

Thanks for the link. I have already looked through that site (especially the 'Lite' category), and I haven't found anything that's really simple enough. It's all made all ready for users, which makes it very difficult and time-consuming to replace the login system, the uploading code, etc. Anything else?

- Steve

hmm, have you heard of Habari?
It's pretty simple and extremely extensible. Might be what you're looking for

Habari...? That name doesn't ring a bell... I'll go see if I can find anything about it. But real quick - what do you mean by 'extensible'? I am a coder, and to a certain point a programmer, so I don't really want something with a bunch of options and things that I can easily add in without touching code. So preferably something that is light (as in size and simplicity).

Thanks again!
- Steve

Extensible means you can extend it by writing plugins to add more functionality as you need it. It takes a minimalist approach, providing "just enough" functionality in the install. So I think it fits the "light" category pretty well.

Yeah, I tested it with a demo a little while ago, and it just has a little too much... stuff. As I said, all I really need is a page listing, page addition, and page modification... and of course, a good way to modify a front end.

Thanks for all the links Will!
- Steve

ok, well if habari is too much for you, you should probably just design your own. It'll probably only take you an hour or two

An hour or two... there you go. I am building my own CMS, and I think I'd put my work on it at more like 60-80 hours so far, maybe more. I don't suggest anyone try to do this without having a good plan for scalability, especially concerning any user system you design, and the database.

Like stevej, most of my need is oriented towards sites that need only a small, lightweight, not overly powerful measure of control. I usually want to give customers only limited options through the WYSIWYG (I use the tinyMCE). However, it is important to have a system that is flexible enough to give a high level of control, if needed, as well as grow in size if there are more users than you anticipate originally. Although the test cases I've set up have been very small, I try to keep in mind the potential of 100's of thousands of users in mind when I build it.

The reason my system works for me, is that I am a programmer. If you are not too good with PHP yet, use someone else's system, as long as you can read the documentation and also implement it. Having a system with a lot of public APIs extending it can have a great advantage, but can sometimes lock you in to something that is not flexible enough to grow with you, especially if you are the only developer.

If you are a coder, you may want to find a system that is similar to what I am inventing. When I want to make content editable by the user, all I need to do is activate the admin on my page:

PHP Code:

<head>
<title>Wayfarer Live</title>
<?php
include "siteadmin/engine/connect.php";
wayfarer::live();
?>
</head>

Then, to make content editable, all I do is activate it with my special functions:

PHP Code:

<body>
<div id="wrapper">
<p>Here is some static text</p>
<h1><?=$live->text("myId", "Default Heading Text")?></h1>
<?=$live->html("myHtmlId", "lorem");//a long lorem ipsum default text ?>
<?=$live->image("myImageId", "/images/myImage.gif")?>
</div>

My way is pretty simple. If I want to make something administrable, all I do is plug in my methods and a space is automatically created for it in the database. Then, when an admin is logged in, they can simply visit their site, roll over the content in question, click, and then edit it. Although most systems are not quite this easy to use, I would look for something that is at least similarly easy to set up.

If your CMS doesn't have a feature for writing articles, I wouldn't even bother, as customers are often if not usually going to need a way to keep adding pages and content. Perfecting this part of my system is less easy, and needless to say, more complicated in its implementation than the example I gave above, though it does build on the same functions and offers some of the same elegance. The fact that my tool allows me to edit everything on the front-end, instead of having a separate section for administration presents challenges in programming the system, though it is very elegant and fun to use.

It sounds like CushyCMS is right up your alley. I would watch the video tutorial. The only con is that your clients would have to edit their site externally from their own domain. However you will be able to build your own custom HTML/CSS pages and just add the content management ability to whatever elements you please, no coding required.

I created an account with CushyCMS a little while ago. While I really like the concept, and I probably will be using it someday, that fact that my users have to edit their content from the CushyCMS website is a big con for me. And unfortunately, a little too big to bypass. But I really do like the simple editing feature. Very cool and streamlined.

- Steve
BTW: Fantastic post wayfarer! That helps me out a lot.

Hey all,
After a while of research and whatnot, I wasn't able to find anything that suit my needs. And what I did find had no documentation and was about 4 years old, so it had a lot of bad code. So - I am going to design my own CMS. As you all know, my programming skills aren't worth a you-know-what, and just about the most complicated thing I can design is a login system. So most likely, for the next few weeks I will be posting questions on how to solve issues, how to go about programming different stuff, etc.

After some consideration, this is what I decided I wanted:
A flat-file CMS. And no, I am not talking about editing text files. My user needs to be able to create a working php file (with the push of a button) with pre-coded information in the header and at the bottom, and only see and edit the part that pertains to him. So he won't have to fiddle around with any file extensions, code, or any of that stuff that he will most likely think is ugly. The user needs to be able to see a list of all the created pages, he needs to be able to create new pages, and edit old ones. That's just the extent of what he is able to do. And that's probably just about the only stuff that I need you to help me with.

If you all could give me advice, code, or anything that you would like to help me with that would be absolutely fantastic.

Thanks a million,
- Steve

Ugh... well turns out, this was not as easy as I expected. I have a whole ton of problems, but I've decided not to bug you right now, so I'll only ask one. So this is what I need to do - each .php page that I have has some extra info, defining special stuff about the page, and whatnot. Something like this:

PHP Code:

////////////////////////
// Special Info
// TITLE: First test page
// LINK: testpage1.php
//////////////////////// 


Basically, I need a script that will list all the php pages in the directory, takes this info found in the page, and instead of echoing the file name, it echoes the info found in the page, and links to that listing. I am assuming this can be done, seeing that the guys over at WordPress were somehow able to achieve it. Got any ideas on how to do this?

- Steve

That's what meta elements are for BTW.

All right, I'm using meta elements... does anyone have any code or anything that I could modify to work?

- Steve