
Ask HN: Simple client websites – What do you use? - mkhalil
For a client, let&#x27;s say a lawn care company who needs a few pages, maybe a portfolio and email quoting service? I notice a lot of people use Wordpress, but I&#x27;m not too familiar with it and it seems like there&#x27;s a ton for a client to look at (menus&#x2F;etc..) when they want to go in and change stuff.<p>I&#x27;m a frontend dev (Ruby&#x2F;Rails + JS [React]), and don&#x27;t want use a wordpress&#x2F;php plugins. I also hate their templating system.<p>How about single page websites? Do you spin up a wordpress just for that?<p>Also hosting. One VPS for all? Do I host one and charge them or just sign them up for their own hosts with their credit cards?<p>I have been doing client websites as a side for a while now and I just can&#x27;t seem to find something that works for ME.
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jeffmould
1) WordPress isn't the greatest, and I think you are right in that there is a
lot of bloat for some simple sites. It would be nice if there was a "WordPress
Lite" or something similar.

In the meantime, I favor WP for small clients for a couple reasons. It is
fairly easy to teach them to use and you can lock it down somewhat with user
roles. This can help prevent accidental alterations to the layout.

Because WP is fairly common, if for some reason the client moves on from me,
the next developer is not handed some custom code they have to figure out.

However, if it is only a 1-2 page site I typically just do a static HTML or
simple PHP site depending on needs.

2\. For VPS, it is so cheap now, I just give them each a VPS. I just bill out
the hosting costs to them each month with a couple extra $$ for "management
costs".

~~~
_RPM
My strategy would be $30 USD for hosting/maintenance (which would be a mask
for a 5 dollar digital ocean box that multiple clients will use).

~~~
jeffmould
I was similar, although I charged $50 month for hosting/maintenance and gave
each client their own droplet/VPS. I would typically go with the $10 or $20
droplet depending on the client, but the monthly fee was the same.

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radva42
I can highly recommend grav: [https://getgrav.org/](https://getgrav.org/) It
uses Twig for templates, stores all data in files (Markdown) and the Admin
panel is easy to extend with custom fields without writing code. Additionally
there's an OK form builder, which can be used to build basic forms and perform
basic operations (e.g. store data in files, send e-mails, etc.) but for
anything more complex you would need to write a plugin.

I've written a few plugins for it, one specifically for creating albums and
galleries for portfolios and I think that it's easy and a straightforward
process.

~~~
threesixandnine
This looks like the perfect CMS for my next project. Any chance of you sharing
albums and galleries plugin?

~~~
codegeek
You may also want to check out
[https://octobercms.com](https://octobercms.com)

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anotheryou
I use wordpress, but I'm not happy.

I really wonder why there is nothing that really streamlines things for the
enduser.

What I want (some of which can be botched in to wp with plugins):

\- pretty forms without much php (ACM does the job for wordpress here, but
with some PHP)

\- lego blocks of form fields, repeatable

\- a nice rich text editor

\- hide every button that is not necessary

\- display instructions next to the editor

A few CMS I tried:

\- wordpress: bloated and you still feel the blog inside, no lego blocks, a
few strange quirks (try explaining how to make an empty line in the editor,
haha)

\- Concrete5: (is this still a thing?) the nicest, true inline WYSIWYG editor,
but too small (few plugins, back in the day a bit buggy)

\- modX: (is this still a thing?) too basic, you don't want to reinvent the
wheel

\- markdown based flat file CMS': Markdown is just not sufficient, so these
have to make a non-markdown header in the files, often just maintainable
through a editor interface. Here i tried: yellow CMS and Grav.

\- - Grav: quite nice except the mentioned quirks. Really nice image handling,
currently not client-friendly but a (payed) admin interface is in the making
and might close this gap. Feels a but young here and there (e.g. can push via
git, but than need to clear the cache manually in the admin interface)

\- - yellow: poorly documented, breaking updates, small

~~~
Mz
What's your opinion of BlogSpot?

~~~
mkhalil
The templating engine on BlogSpot is not fun at all.

~~~
Mz
How so? (I quite like it. I am looking for insights.)

Thanks.

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BjoernKW
WordPress, because simple websites tend to not stay simple.

Yes, WordPress is bloated and quirky in some ways but it gets the job done,
works with every hosting service under the sun and you get plugins for any use
case you can imagine.

For my own websites that I know will definitely stay simple I use plain HTML
templates and GitHub Pages.

------
saluki
If you use Rails create your own micro cms or just do a simple html website
with rails added in as needed.

I'm a fullstack developer Rails and Laravel and I develop WordPress Sites and
Plugins. My main focus is web applications now but I have some legacy clients
with basic websites.

WordPress is painful to deal with, most clients don't end up making their own
changes with it anyway, it's bloated, has security issues, is slower loading
than a Rails/Laravel site.

For you I'd recommend creating the sites in Html/CSS/Rails.

Try to sell your clients on a subscription that includes design, development,
hosting and up to once monthly updates of existing content. Have packages that
cover up to 5, 10, 15 pages, then as they add pages you can increase their
subscription price. This has worked well for me for most clients. I'm sure you
could get a high maintenance one here or there that could bombard you with
requests for changes. But you can always increase their plan price
occasionally if they are becoming a high demand client.

As far as hosting, a $5 digital ocean droplet would be enough for most small
business brochure sites, then each one is one their own VPS. You could stack
them on one VPS but I like having them on their own.

I use laravel forge to spin up the droplets and deploy repos, it also has
build in support for lets encrypt so you can add SSL at no cost.

Good luck getting a system setup that works for you.

~~~
kuniko
How do you justify to the client charging per page? What about page
complexity? Like an about me page vs an interactive map.

~~~
saluki
This is mainly for brochure style websites so a page is a typical page,
content and images. The per page charge is generally for the ongoing maint. so
as the site grows the monthly fee for hosting/updates grows.

For speciality pages or something really complex those are quoted as a one
time fee to create them. If they don't take a lot of time I might just create
them under the subscription model as well. The clients understand that the per
page pricing is for a typical webpage, custom pages, functionality and forms
are quoted as they are requested.

------
ncouture
There are many sites that showcase their simplicity with free software:

    
    
      https://www.palletsprojects.com/ (python / lektor)
        - source: https://github.com/pallets/website
    
      http://flask.pocoo.org/ (python / flask)
        - source: https://github.com/pallets/flask-website/
    
      https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/ (appengine / jekyll)
        - source: https://github.com/google/
    

Have you tried writing a progressive web app using Polymer?

------
marktangotango
I really admire that you're challenging basic assumptions here; that every
little site needs a full cms instance, or vps. That's a lot of infrastructure
for something that should be pretty basic. I also questioned those assumptions
and came up static file hosting service with a CORS api backed by sql. I
promote it here pretty regularly. [https://www.lite-
engine.com](https://www.lite-engine.com)

I'd really love to work with someone like yourself to iron out what you're
needs are! Drop an email to support at the link above if you'd like to chat
more.

------
milankragujevic
I personally just use either Drupal, for complex websites because it's very
customisable and flexible, or just write something in PHP with my own
framework base.

For hosting, for smaller static-ish sites I register a shared hosting account
and give the client login, for bigger websites a VPS just for the site, that I
charge separately to update, and all ports except 80, 443, 21 and 22 are
closed.

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hnjake
Have a look at [https://craftcms.com](https://craftcms.com) I have used it a
couple of time. What I really like about it is you have complete control of
what gets to edit/add. And interface for the client is as simple or complex as
needed.

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patrickgordon
I know a few people who have used this for client's:
[https://github.com/comfy/comfortable-mexican-
sofa](https://github.com/comfy/comfortable-mexican-sofa)

Perhaps you could create your own boilerplate project based on your
experiences spinning up these for clients.

Bonus points for open sourcing it!

------
alexmorenodev
Wordpress with some tweaks is fine. Also, joomla. Hidden unwanted menus, use a
barebone theme, create some settings or custom posts types... That's it. Well,
better than write it by my own. I Already made it, and after I changed to
Wordpress, my simple small CMS sites were being developed 5x faster.

------
mkhalil
Just an FYI: I just found this
([http://www.phpthewrongway.com/](http://www.phpthewrongway.com/)) article
floating around, really helpful in sort of realizing, everyone could be wrong.

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ruraljuror
I'm curious what people would think of Squarespace for this? Personally I have
no opinion/experience, but if a friend asked for my help that would be the
first thing to come to mind.

~~~
sova
Yeah for shopping portals, definitely a premade solution is a nice way to go.
Easy and if you give the credentials to the client they can do it
themselves... depends on how invested one is.

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jebernier
Bootstrap

~~~
anotheryou
no CMS, a fight if you want pixel perfect design

