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I am on a dedicated project. It is an e-commerce website. That website is in 3 languages and runs on 7 domains at the moment ( .com/.us/.au/.fr/.ru/.ca/.nz ). It has been running since forever so very old logics and processes are still being applied into it as big changes cannot be made easily. Now, it has 32 email templates for every domain related to purchase etc. At the moment if there is even a little change a designer has to do it 32x7 times. It is highly redundant. I proposed my development team to make master template for each domain and seeing as only EN FR and RU will need different templates so i will have to only make changes 3 times. Now, i am baffled as to how the backend for that would/should be, as in, the header, footer, navigation etc will all be coming from cms/database where a non technical person will enter text to make changes. Can you please give me an idea as to how should i approach this ? The project is in asp.net.
Sorry for the long description but i am really confused as to how the data entry person will enter all the information related to emails and other things that will need this sort of implementation. Sorry for my english as i am not sure myself if i was able to clearly state the issue, let me know and i will explain it again. Thanks.
If you use a proper CMS (e.g. Kentico CMS) that stores content in a database, the backend depends on how the CMS organizes the data in its database.
Learn about how the content maintainers will organize the language-dependent content (in the way that you are already thinking about it - content for what defined page sections per language)...and how that will translate into your CMS's underlying organization of the data.
Start small, and be systematic - on the input end (i.e. how a content maintainer will go about doing their part) and on the content-consumption end; try to make one simple portion of the site that works with so much redundancy today...work without it; and go from there.
For example, focus initially on one simple defined section in one page with content for each language. With that clear, consider a more complicated section that requires organization of content for each of its content areas. Then expand to multiple pages, considering different page types that may have different defined sections (and may already be clear from different master pages they employ).
For email templates in particular, I have successfully used a CMS-maintained Smarty template per transactional-email type (e.g. order confirmation, shipment confirmation etcetera) for e-sales - even with ASP.NET being the primary technology on the team. You may need # of email types * # of languages templates, but it sounds like such an approach could work.
Also, consider that your CMS very well may expose services whereby you can get the content, such that you do not really have to be directly concerned with how it organizes the backend data.
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I help make promo/event websites that shoot up and come down anywhere from a month to six months.
Clients ask for minute text edits a lot during the creation period, and during the live period they sometimes like to swap out images or text every few weeks to function as updates. It's inconvenient for the client to do this all through emails and phone calls.
I have been asked to do research to find a CMS that will let the clients do minor edits like this.
I was pointed to big dogs like Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, and Typo3, but these are all very heavy-handed.
I settled on trying ImpressPages because of its inline editing and undo log but it too began to ask for a lot - I tried to adapt an old project to it but it insists all content calls and form submissions adhere to its framework so it's definitely not easy to drop in.
I don't need a CMS that handles page creation or any sort of overhead.
What I need is a CMS that doesn't care about any facet of the page other than editing text, swapping images, and probably a pretty secure login. Since we take care of the backend and it's only live for a few months it doesn't need detailed project maintenance and certainly the client should not have access to that.
Do you have any suggestions for lightweight CMSs that are easy to pop into a project?
11/11/14 EDIT:
Results so far:
I think a good alternative for this problem is Create.js and one of its children ContentBlocks, however they require node.js and REST which I have yet to really figure out. Quite different from what I know. However, this system allows for editing in-line on the page and saving right there, with no overhead menus or settings or anything. Just edit divs. Here's a link:
http://createjs.org/
children projects can be found by snooping the github
There are more CMS options out there than almost any other web technology. That said some are more and less easy to customize. It sounds like you've steered away from most of the common answers, although I really think you might want to look at WordPress again, with a little setup work and customizing the admin page it can be super lean and "dead simple" like Tumblr's interface.
That said there are a few more good options that are very light and yet full of potential!
Database back end
Perch – This one isn't free, but it's not expensive. It is built with the designer in mind (by other designers) and is also built with the end user in mind, thus it is light, flexible and the interface is not daunting to the non dev. And has very very good support.
Cake PHP – A lovely bit of OSS work, that will need some setting up by you or another dev, but once you have boilerplate/templates it should be simple to roll and unroll small sites.
Anchor – Another OSS project that seeks to be powerful but slight in it's footprint, but probably more structured (less pre-dev time required) than Cake PHP.
Flat file
No DB required, the user just puts their stuff in folders (like on their desktop) and then they get webpages - kinda brilliant and maybe just what you're looking for.
Pico – Uses PHP templates, but a simple file folder based structure, so there is very little learning curve to running or setting up the site.
Kirby – While this is not free, it is very well supported by original developers. It is designed with the goal of being dead simple to use and support.
Dropplets – This one is very very simple, possibly too simple, but there is very little to make a confusing interface out of. This one is very blog focused.
Hope that helps guide your search, as this list is far from exhaustive.
I have also been looking something easy and lightweight for clients to use for days. There are tons of options but there always seems to be something a bit off.
Finally yesterday I found two very good candidates:
Really impressed with both of them have been developing with Drupal, Conrete5, Wordpress.. but this is what simple sites need! Wow!
TidyCMS
http://tidycms.com/
Free / cheap license
Static pages hosted on your site + a connector that connects to the hosted editor. Basic package free.
"TidyCMS is a flat databaseless CMS that makes HTML-files editable and dynamic."
A Finnish startup who are creating a super simple product!
It could not be easier you just throw in a static html-template and put a TidyCMS-conector folder and browse to the subfolder. The subfolder connects to the hosted editor. The editor lets you click on page elements to make them editable. The interface is pretty okay. A bit rough though still, with some glithes. Seems to be in heavy development, but it's already pretty usable. The UI hangs sometimes, for instance when saving changes and you have to reload.
Instant Update
http://instant-update.com/
Open Source! Free! GNU General license.
This seems to be more mature. Also handles static html/php -files but the CMS seems to need a database. The inline editing is pretty good and stylish. The system also has backend with simple user and page management. Still in development by a small group of guys. I'm sure they'll welcome more people.
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I have designed a website for my brother's company using Adobe Dreamweaver CS5.
How can I create a content management system (CMS) for him to let him easy to edit or post news in his website? I think that using Dreamweaver will be difficult for him.
Any CMS is going to require server-side scripting. Typically one starts with a CMS framework, and then designs the theme around it. There is no easy way to "CMSify" your Dreamweaver design. I suggest you take a look at the Wordpress framework, which will require a PHP backend. Here is a link to a tutorial on creating custom Wordpress themes.
It's not an easy task if you don't have any experience with scripting, but depending of the complexity of the website there are some good options. What I mean is, depending on how much dynamic the site will be. Put yourself some questions like:
Is the website mostly static, and only some text areas and images have to be updated? Or are there more dynamic parts that involve the creation of new pages, like a blog or a "products" page? Do you need a friendly backend, or would your brother be ok with updating text in text files? Will it be only your brother updating the content, of he will need to manage several users?
The degree of difficulty for you will be proportional to the degree of friendliness of updating to your brother/users.
Depending on the answers to those questions you can use something has:
as a file based CMS without interface (Kirby) or with (Monstra,
razorCMS)
A very simple to convert but also very basic CMS (Surreal, Cushy,
Perch)
A full blown CMS that will take longer to learn, but give
all the flexibility to do whatever you want (there
are many choices, but Processwire is my absolute favourite)
Rather than creating a CMS, try installing an existing one that will import your static pages and perform the main steps of making them work in the new system. It's not that hard to do from scratch, but many web hosts will have some of these systems pre-installed. You can find out what CMSs your web host offers, and then Google "[name of CMS] import html".
The MODX CMS (modx.com) has some decent tools for importing HTML into the system. Detailed instructions here.
WordPress has various plugins you can install to do the same thing, including HTML Import 2. Detailed instructions here.
WordPress works best for people who like a simpler interface. MODX works best for people who like design control, and also for people who plan on doing a lot of their own code to extend the system.
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I want to choose a CMS that will be part of my infrastructure for my company websites.
What do you think are the questions I need to ask before I really choose one?
Choosing a CMS is almost like choosing a framework.
Thanks
Your two starting questions should be about people:
Who will be building and maintaining the technology? If your organisation's IT department is in love with Microsoft solutions, then find the best .NET CMS that meets your needs (Umbraco, Kentico, DotNetNuke etc). If you have no money but you're fairly IT-savvy and have a couple of Web designers on tap to help you out, then a designer-friendly free system like MODX Revolution makes sense. If some of your people have worked with a big system like Drupal, then that's your leading candidate.
Who will be adding content to the system? Internal users will want an interface that rewards use - it must react fast, protect the user from losing their work, make content easy to find, and ease tasks like creating new pages and including links and images. That might push you towards CMS Made Simple, or even WordPresss if your needs are otherwise modest. And if most of the content will be contributed by a user community, the CMS must support a strong forum capability.
After that, take a look at Step Two's document How to evaluate a content management system. These guys know their stuff. You may even want to buy their Content Management Requirements Toolkit. Their evaluation document gives you a starting point for your evaluation.
Do bear in mind, though, that not all requirements are created equal. For instance, many CMS texts stress the importance of complex workflow and versioning. In large publishing businesses, these sometimes matter a lot. In most smaller organisations they don't matter as much. Your workflow may consist of one person putting content into the system and another approving it to go live - the sort of task that can be accomplished with a staging server and email. Versioning may be adequately covered by a regular back-up.
And remember above all that when you put a CMS in an existing organisation, you're engaging in politics. You need to find out what people want, show you're delivering it, explain to them the considerations which they don't know about but which have to be taken into account, and convince them you're acting to bring them the best possible tool. Good luck.
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I've just picked up a contract to sort out a vipers-nest of e-commerce websites that a previous 'developer' left for one of my clients. There's about a couple of dozen of them using a custom shopping cart and CMS system that's too embedded to dump and works well enough, but desperately needs cleaning up, re-factoring, and bug fixing, so a reasonably substantial recoding job.
As part of this my client is desperate to ensure the best search engine placement he can get. Like many developers I've a nodding acquaintance with the idea, but no real knowledge, and it seems that it would be helpful to get up to speed on this so I can build appropriately into the code.
So can people advise on useful quality resources - books, websites, blogs etc? I do not wish to obsess over every last detail on this (he can use a specialist if he decides to pull every last ounce out - although I've always regarded such as little better than snake-oil peddlers), but I would like to build code and reconfigure templates in a manner that helps rather than hinders placement.
Look at Wikipedia with styles off. See how they order their content? See how they use correct tags to label the content? These are the keys to long term success.
The most important SEO advice is to create a semantic, logical site. The content comes first and is ordered by importance. Use the correct tags, don't do tables. Then apply styles. Then apply script to make it fancy. (Like Tomas said)
Know the difference between what is content (pictures of your products) and not (your logo tiled on the background). Basically do your best to present good content in a good way. You can't game the system for long term gains.
This will give you long term placement. Most SEO companies just do tricks or links farms or worry about keywords and meta tags, so they are temporary at best. I think it is good to assume that Google works just as hard to drop that crap from it's index as the SEO marketers do to include it.
According to Google's patent
Age of domain.
Important sites that link to you.
Content. Make it real and accurate.
http://appft1.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/PTO/search-bool.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=PG01&s1=20050071741&OS=20050071741&RS=20050071741
A main concern when thinking SEO should always be usability. Make sure the mark-up is semantic, make sure the site works without javascript, css and images - in other words, make sure that 'low-level browsers' are able to read the contents of your page. Think of optimizing the site for a screen reader for the blind and visually impaired, and you will automatically cover the search engines, because that is exactly what they are - blind browsers.
A standard no-no is a table layout, mainly because it does not order the site content by relevance. To a human being reading your site, it is no problem looking two inches down instead of at the very top of your page, but the screenreader reads the code, not the visual view.
Thus, you should make sure that you have the important things - a high-level heading (preferrably <h1> or <h2>), the main menu (in a <ul> list) and the content in divs at the top of the source, and less important content (the logo, banners, quickmenus etc that aren't really crucially needed to be accessible) further down. You are always able to re-order where the stuff is actually shown in your css.
New tag to use called CANONICAL can now also be used, from Google, click HERE
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I am looking to revamp our CRUD web forms and would appreciate any examples of good UI design.
We have lots of database tables that have minimal editing needs by the user - Country Codes, Tax codes, Product prices, and so on - and these all currently use a simple format for CRUD, but it was designed by developers and looks very bland, and quite possibly could have far better usability, and certainly a better design.
Our process is:
Find screen - which also has an ADD NEW button. Enter values for any parameters relevant to search for and press FIND button. Matching records displayed in a grid with an EDIT link. The corresponding Edit form allows CLONE, DELETE and SAVE.
Where appropriate an Edit form may display Child Records.
For very complex records / relationships the Edit form is replaced by a Record Card, which displays everything including the kitchen sink! and appropriate records / sub records have EDIT links.
Its functional, but uninspiring.
On an 80:20 basis the code is all mechanically generated, so re-generating it for a new metaphor shouldn't be too hard.
I like a lot of the UI in the Magento eCommerce Admin pages, but I would be interested in any other examples you can recommend
Here are some examples of UI patterns:
Input Controls
Stacked Tabs
Inline Input Adder
One Page Wizards
Overlay
Generally each section will explain the pattern, how and why to use, and gives a handful of graphics as real world examples.
As an additional resource, you can also visit ThemeForest's admin template site and browse through their many products and get pictures and live tours of very well designed and styled admin pages. I personally have used a few of these templates for data heavy sites.
Hope these help you out some.
7/25/18 Update: While it is hard to keep links from nine years ago working, it seem that the website which hosted the UI examples is now gone. Read Farewell from Patternry for further information.
Links worth a look:
http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2008/04/17/web-form-design-modern-solutions-and-creative-ideas/
http://somerandomdude.com/articles/design/form-design/
The Dynamic Data Web Site that you can create using .Net 3.5 is pretty handy. Good clean dynamic CRUD ability and yet very customizable. Routing makes it possible to default to generated pages when needed and custom pages if you choose to create them.
Dynamic Data Web Site
These guys have really nice examples-
http://wufoo.com/gallery/
To me, the Django admin interface is a good example of a CRUD interface.
I've just stumbled onto this one
there you will find a couple of REALLY GREAT templates!!!
http://www.webappers.com/2009/09/18/20-professional-web-admin-templates-on-themeforest/