Ask HN: CMS Help

[techie20]

Hello! I'm wondering if anyone can give me an explanation of CMS for freelance web designers. I know that its meant to allow whoever I make the website for the ability to edit and change the content without my help. However, I'm a bit confused about the whole concept, or how to implement it, etc. Can anyone give me a quick overview/tutorial, or maybe point me to a link to really good online tutorial along with the best (hopefully free) CMS software I might need to get started? Thanks!

[niyazpk]

Read this first: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_content_management_system

For users:

- They get a good admin section (without paying the developer to actually develop it)

- If they are administering multiple websites, the admin section will be similar in the UI and functionality.

For developers:

- You get a basic framework to build upon.

- Popular CMS-s have plugins for almost everything and you just have to integrate those stuff into your website. This saves a lot of effort.

Note that you still will have to do some HTML (or PHP or whatever) coding to get to the exact requirements of the client.

As for CMS choice:

- wordpress: recommended for blogs, magazine website, news websites etc (mainly based on content like articles etc)

-drupal: better for general purpose websites. (Wordpress 3.0 has many powerful features that are comparable to that of drupal, but most of the plugins (and the community) are still targeting the blogging crowd, so it is better to stick with drupal for now)

[gspyrou]

Take a look at Wordpress http://wordpress.org/

[techie20 → gspyrou]

Thank you, I've heard of Wordpress before. I was wondering if you could explain for me in terms of how to implement it. For example - I have a small local business that I'm making a website for. What do I do using Wordpress that allows them to update their specials or daily news without editing HTML. Do they have to have Wordpress as well? Or am I just retarded and Don't realize that that's what Wordpress does by default?

[gspyrou → techie20]

Wordpress needs to be installed on a server , then your clients may access the admin section and update the content of the site . You may signup for an account yourself in order to see this workflow in action http://en.wordpress.com/signup/