azren

We have more than 500 pages of static webpages. How do we define to the management why we need a CMS? Can someone point me to where I can find good information about CMS? Why do we need CMS? How can CMS improve the way we do business, etc..?

fishfillet

i'm not an expert on this but i suggest you go to http://mamboserver.com where they have an article re: CMS. also, if i remember it right, there is an article at http://opensourcecms.com that may help you.

Why do you need CMS in my own words? It will be a lot easier to manage your more than 500 static webpages. with Mambo, its easy to look for components and modules that will suit your needs. plus, mambo is very easy to customize.

there my two cents go

Se7eN

better yet... why the hell would you NOT go there? Isn't it more logical to use a comprehensive, versatile and performant tool (that is free of charge !) instead of typing HTML code in some notepad all day long? Or even if you use professional web design tools (dreamweaver, golive,...) you may want to switch, there's no comparing dynamic content with static content. Only reason to ever opt for static pages is for performance, but you'll need several thousands of concurrent users to make that a good reason

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gateone

Hi,

many customers who want a web site have asked me about the benefits of a content management system vs. static sites.

Today, especially with Mambo being such a state-of-the-art CMS that above all is open source, we even recommend small business sites with about 6 to 7 pages of content to go CMS.

There are several economical as well as technical advantages using a CMS over static pages. I try to put down some lines for you to provide you with some good argumentation, both from a technical as well as from a economical point of view.

On a static web pages, chaning content almost always requires the person to change, add, delete content to be a web programmer or at least capable of writing HTML. New content usually but comes from other people in a company. So, they write the content and hand it over the the IT guy. Basically, editing a web site this way is an easy thing for the IT guy. From an economical point of view however, this is not very clever: the IT guy usually has better things to do for his money than editing some lines on a web site.

Using a CMS enables e.g. the marketing department or a deciated person - who does not need ANY HTML or programming knowledge - to keep the web site up to date.

From a practical point of view the web site is more up to date and usually this also has direct impact in how much the site is visitied by your clientel. Also, search engines such as Google do note when a site is just put up and left at it, or if it is alive and things are happening there. A busy web site definitively gets a better ranking, meaning more people will also find it through search engines.

From a technical point of view, with a static web site, usually you needed to programm each site from scratch. A CMS offers a template system, meaning, the "design" is just done once. Content is filled into that template by the CMS.

This speeds up development time if new parts of the web site shall be put online. Instead of programming each page by page, the web designer programms the template (if it differs from the existing standard tamplate) and the marketing guy fills it up with his content, using a familiar interface that he will easily be able to use (it's a bit like working in a text editor), no knowledge of HTML or programming needed.

Basically: using a CMS helps keeping a site much more up to date. You are quicker to put up new content or delete outdated content as you can have the marketing guys do their work right on the web page. It helps save money: deoployment of new page styles are quicker. Overall changes to the site design can easily be done: only one template file needs to be changed, not all pages one by one.

There is yet another advantage: at 500 pages plus, a static web site can become very complex. You will need to find the right HTML file for the content you want to change and this might be a bit difficult with so many pages. Or you might need to change something in a page header. If you did not work with frames (which is definitivly not a very professional way to build up sites anymore anyway, you won't find frames any more on large corporate web sites at all any more!) this might mean that the change of header might mean editing all the 500 pages on your site. In a CMS all you do is make the changes in ONE place and they are reflected throught the site.

Another thing is: if there is more than one HTML programmer, or the typical guy who has done the job quits or is sick, someone else will take over and maybe he or she might not be fully aware of the corporate design and how it is rolled out on the web page. Now he or she needs to fill some new pages with content - like e.g. you bring out a new product and want to show it on the site. Can you be certain he or she will definitively keep to the existing design? What if this new guy has no great knowledge of your products and there might be an error in a small detail that can cost you a lot of money, only because the web programmer got something wrong?! If you had the marketing guy just go to the admininstration area of the CMS, log in with his user (which will only let him add, change or delete contetn, but not change the overal site design, or even the menu structure), and add the new content easily by himself. Even a product manager could do the job and put his new stuff on the CMS. After that, the marketing manager can review it and only THEN clear it for publication on the web! So you can also introcude easy work flows...

Hope that this can help you,

Steph

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exoticpublishing

Hi Everyone,

Someone passed me this thread.

I've been having difficulty deciding whether to stay with DW or start using a CMS.

Perhaps I will change, but what I want to know is this....

If I get a web designer to design a template for me & they don't know Mambo, how do I get it uploaded into Mambo?

Thanks & have a great day !


Michelle

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MULLEMAN

Strange question for some one who has build 500 static sites

jomaco1

Your best be will be to hire a Mambo designer to convert your template. If your designer creates the html for the template it may be a very simple task to convert it to mambo, but most of us can slice a PSD and create the html too.

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eyezberg

Why?
Because it will make your life easier.
You can have people with almost no web knowledge edit/ update articles (WYSIWYG editor);
you can just unpublish pages if not needed anymore, keeping the content available if needed later on;
you achieve by the use of a simple CSS stylesheet a consistent look for the whole site without having to do anything,
your site can be/look as simple or complex as you want/need..

Look at this site: http://www.vachemambo.com/
It's Mambo, it uses a completely non CMS looking template, it has only a few pages, but it's nice; makes use of the "different layout for different pages" feature in a nice way, uses only core components.. Mambo will supply all you may ever need functionality-wise: contact form, polls, boards, shop, whatever..

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exoticpublishing

Hi there,

What does a typical CMS website look like?

Thanks


Michelle

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iainshaw

Michelle, you seem to be asking the same question a lot and jomaco1 is trying to answer it a lot

A Mambo template is not so different to a non-Mambo template or design. The difference is small fragments of code inserted into the template to pull in the dynamic content that Mambo manages. As it is a CMS it works better with some designs than others but it is fairly flexible.

If your web designer is used to working with dynamic content but has not encountered Mambo before then it will be both a small step and an enormous boon for them. Mambo could represent a huge boost to their productivity once they've gone through the initial learning curve. If they are familiar with PHP that would be a bonus of course

If your web designer is not familiar with dynamic content then they would probably be better described a graphics or layout designer. In that case Mambo is one of the best ways into dynamic content than I could think of. Someone has already made the point in this post, why wouldn't you go for dynamic content over static?

for me the beauty of Mambo is I can do my design away from the hurly-burly of the underlying code that powers the content. I can use familiar tools, Dreamweaver, Photoshop......vi (oops, but I really like vi) and then convert this to Mambo by changing a small number of template files. Lovely.

I encourage you to download MSAS 4.5.2 and play with it. Use rhuk_solarflareii template and see what a well designed template can do for content management and layout. Have fun