Content Managed Sites
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- breadlegz
Have any of you designed content managed sites or aware of cretively done content managed sites?
I have been asked to design one and I need to know the restrictions. i.e How much control would a client have?Would it be a basic WYSIWYG type thing or even simpler?
Help please
- stewart0
breadlegz, you switched "typeface design" and "character design" in your portfolio.
- mirola0
it's a fairly huge subject, what are you thinking about specifically?
you don't need to think about the actual aesthetics of it as much as a client-facing site because generally people *have* to use them. it's a lot more important to think about the usability of it really. make sure your users can preview things before sending them live. if you've got the budget you could figure in some kind of editor procedure i.e. everything must be checked by a super admin or something before they can actually go live. distributed responsibility i think it's called. you can honestly go as huge or as small as you like. it all depends on the budget.
- schjetne0
I'd help you more, but I'm darn busy building my content management system today.
Basic: Client can't mess with stylesheets and graphics.
They can add pages in the hierarchical structure, delete pages, upload pictures. Nothing more.
Oh, and there's a news module, a picture gallery module and a a basic "content" module.
Did that help at all?
- breadlegz0
thats a help thanks
have you got any examples??
- mirola0
this is a very good open-source on. the best thing is that it's xhtml 1
- shutdown0
www.aspnuke.com i think does one or www.duware.com
both asp driven
- sparker0
asp bad.
there really isn't a need to build a cms from scratch, especially since you've never done this before and also because you don't know what your time frame and budget are yet.
i suggest checking out these links, mate:
one of the best (built in perl)
http://movabletype.org/a list of open-source ones:
http://www.la-grange.net/cmshere's an 'reference' site about cms's:
http://www.opensourcecms.com/you might also want to look at http://slashcode.org/ it is the system that runs slashdot.
if built correctly, there is no reason why the presentation layer of the site can't be well designed, visually and graphically.
but, it is true, this is the type of project that requires a focus and understanding of information architecture, workflow and usability. if you just slap something together it will most likely fail.
planning is more important than production in this case...especially if this is a largescale userbase - such as a large, internal corporate site.
this could also be a good time to cut your teeth on proper web design and development techniques using web standards.
large content driven sites require speed and effecient design to preform their best. valid xhtml/css design would help reduce bandwidth, improve search engine optimisation, etc.
:)
good luck with it. my first major project ever 6 and half years ago was this exact thing. i fucked it up so much that it taught me exactly how important function and usability over pretty looks is.
- breadlegz0
Some great advice thanks.
I wont be doing the CMS but I will be designing the look, feel and structure, so i'll bear all that in mind.
What confuses me a little is what kind of interface does the customer get to use to customise the site. Is it a very basic case of.. choose a page... choose the piece of text or picture you want to update then that comes up in a seperate panel that you can modify????
- ribit0
Go look at a few of the demos of existing CMS systems to familiarise yourself with their workflows...
heres a demo of a fairly simple system:
http://www.kitsite.co.uk/
- monkeyshine0
If you're looking for a cheap, quick fix: http://www.sitemason.com
- JazX0
so your looking to design an online edito is it? Like a Wicky? That's what we did using .NET architecture. No need for FTP. Blah blah, username and pass and go for it. :)