I’m having a problem trying to find a good way for clients to make edits to their Web pages, add photos, make fairly simple updates. I’d be grateful to hear if anyone has a good solution for this?
Welcome to the forum Steve!
Your post is a little short on details. If you’re designing and building websites, I’d think you would already know the answers and challenges involved.
The best way I know is to build the website in a content management system (Joomla, WordPress, Drupal, etc.), then teach them how to log in and make minor changes. The online drag-and-drop website building apps are even easier, but they’re limited and mainly useful for smaller websites that don’t need special or custom features.
The answer really depends on what kind of client will be needing to update the site, their level of comfort with making modifications and what kind of website they need. There is no one-size-fits-all solution.
Thanks for your response Just-B. I have html css responsive sites that I code myself, I like the flexibility of this hand done approach, but they lack a cms. Hmmm. I’ve been using a flat editor, Sitecake, for my clients to use, which is a lovely idea when it works, but has to many glitches in my experience. I think perhaps I need to look at Joomla. I’ve avoided this, thinking it would be a very complex process for small sites. But I have a 50 page site which I think would definitely benefit from a cms. In your experience, is it possible to retrofit Joomla to an existing site?
By the way, the forum is excellent. I’ve often read it, but now I’m a first time poster! Thanks for your advice. Much appreciated. No hurry for a reply.
I’m currently looking for excuses to delay heading outside to mow the lawn, so it’s OK.
I’ve always preferred building websites from scratch too. Hand-coding them means I can do most anything I want with them without being constrained by the limitations of a CMS and whatever template/theme I’m using.
However, for large sites, doing everything by hand becomes impractical and, as you mentioned, it’s impractical to expect most clients to dig through raw HTML on a web server. For both these things, a CMS is a reasonably good solution.
As far as CMSs go, I’m a big fan of Joomla but not such a big fan of WordPress.
For me, WordPress means stumbling around those things that made sense with blogging software but get in the way when called upon for other kinds of websites. Even so, WordPress is still the easiest to learn and use, which makes it a good choice for clients who just need to log on and use a WYSIWYG editor to make text changes and upload photos. WordPress is also, by far, the most popular CMS, so despite my misgivings, it’s likely the best choice for small- to medium-sized websites where there’s not a whole lot of technical savvy backing up the maintenance and updates. In addition, I’m finding many clients have it in their heads that website means WordPress, so that’s what they’re expecting.
For medium- to larger-sized clients with more specialized needs and a more savvy staff to manage it, I’ll pick Joomla over WordPress any day, but that’s just me and likely due to the fact that I’ve worked with it since 2005 when it forked off from it’s predecessor Mambo. I do remember having some difficulty wrapping my head around it at first, though, so take my preferences with a grain of salt.
Hi Just-B,
Apologies, I’ve been travelling. Many thanks for your advice. I hear what you’re saying. In fact there has to be a trade off in order to give editing access to clients. So, which trade off.
I must say that WordPress always seemed to me to be a no, no, for the blogging design reasons you mention, but I think you make a good point and I think I should sit down with WordPress and see how much we can push it about, how much control we can have and how my client’s site and style of site could fit in the WordPress environment.
I should also take a good look at Joomla, but like your grass cutting, that might take a little longer!
Many thanks for your comments and assistance.
Hi Steve,
You asked the best way to edit the customer’s websites as to how to add photos, make updates, edit webpages. Right?
Dear, with time we need to edit web content, photos, make simple updates, and we try to make the proceedings even easier. The best website is user friendly.
Better, edit the given data of website time to time. The best way will be, when the editing adds to the seo value, makes its engaging and feasible to search.
It’s also important as on what platform you create the website.