Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

Ratspittle · Jul 9, 2006, 05:10 AM

I build websites for many types of clients. My business has really taken off lately, and I am finding myself with less time to update sites( with things such as band calendars). What I am looking for is a way for my clients to update their own show dates, testimonials, etc via a web based or email based system. I do not want them choosing the font or font-weights, or formatting....just the text itself. I have looked into various CMS's and even some things like wikis and seedblogs. None of these things seem like they are what I am looking for, and of all of them, seed blogs seems closest. Aside from buying all my clients versions of adobe contribute, it would seem that there HAS to be some sort of simple way to define editable regions in a page that a client can change without seeing code or changing formatting or using ftp or without ME having to learn a whole new scripting language, and no, I am not really familiar with php, etc. Most of the pages I develop are "shingles", static websites with only small changes on fairly regular occasions, such as updating a calendar. Does anyone have any suggestions for a secure, simple inexpensive/free way for my clients to do small text changes on predefined blocks of text without specialized software (for them)?

Love Calm Quiet · Jul 11, 2006, 08:56 AM

It's SO easy w/PHP (with or without MySQL).� It's worth a little time getting to know the software that should be included at no extra charge at any commercial host.

I like Larry Ullman's Visual QuickPro volume on PHP/MySQL.

Play around with it a bit: there's a huge, helpful community out there - as well as good books.

besson3c · Jul 11, 2006, 09:20 AM

Originally Posted by Ratspittle

I build websites for many types of clients. My business has really taken off lately, and I am finding myself with less time to update sites( with things such as band calendars). What I am looking for is a way for my clients to update their own show dates, testimonials, etc via a web based or email based system. I do not want them choosing the font or font-weights, or formatting....just the text itself. I have looked into various CMS's and even some things like wikis and seedblogs. None of these things seem like they are what I am looking for, and of all of them, seed blogs seems closest. Aside from buying all my clients versions of adobe contribute, it would seem that there HAS to be some sort of simple way to define editable regions in a page that a client can change without seeing code or changing formatting or using ftp or without ME having to learn a whole new scripting language, and no, I am not really familiar with php, etc. Most of the pages I develop are "shingles", static websites with only small changes on fairly regular occasions, such as updating a calendar. Does anyone have any suggestions for a secure, simple inexpensive/free way for my clients to do small text changes on predefined blocks of text without specialized software (for them)?

You should look into my homegrown CMS on my website (the NetMusician Webkit). I'm working on opening up the source code. You can have it if you want it.

Ratspittle · Jul 11, 2006, 01:38 PM

Bessom, and Love Calm Quiet,
Thank you for the replies...this whole thing has been driving me nuts. Bessom, as far as your software, I don't really want to let the clients change pictures and fonts. Is there a way to disable those options? Otherwise, a few of my more ambitious clients will end up trashing their sites.

As for the Php/sql I looked it up and on the surface it looks like I will need to learn c++. I am fine with installing scripts and what not, I don't have the time to program. Do you have any suggestions as to where to start with this?

Look forward to hearing from you again.
Ratspittle

Ratspittle · Jul 11, 2006, 01:40 PM

Also, I just learned css and all of my previous sites have many complicated nesting tables, is this going to be a problem? I need to retrofit at least three of my sites with this user update-able option.
-RS

besson3c · Jul 11, 2006, 02:19 PM

Originally Posted by Ratspittle

Bessom, and Love Calm Quiet,
Thank you for the replies...this whole thing has been driving me nuts. Bessom, as far as your software, I don't really want to let the clients change pictures and fonts. Is there a way to disable those options? Otherwise, a few of my more ambitious clients will end up trashing their sites.

As for the Php/sql I looked it up and on the surface it looks like I will need to learn c++. I am fine with installing scripts and what not, I don't have the time to program. Do you have any suggestions as to where to start with this?

Look forward to hearing from you again.
Ratspittle

Ratspittle:

There is actually no way for my clients to change fonts. They can upload new pictures to be attached to news stories, but these pictures are automatically scaled and prepped for the web. Essentially, the Webkit just allows musicians to focus on their content. Check out the admin pages of the demo site for a better idea of this. I'm actually a jazz trumpet player myself, so I think I understand completely what your musicians are looking for.

Like I said, I've been meaning to make my software open source. It needs a little more work before it is useful to other people, but this was definitely on my list of things to do. For you, it will handle things like itinerary management, bio editing, etc. right now. My musicians have been using these basic functions for years - it's the more advanced modules such as the second revision to the store, automatic sound clip prepping, etc. that is currently in development. However, I use this with all of my websites in a production environment. It is easy to work with these current temporary limitations.

besson3c · Jul 11, 2006, 02:25 PM

Ratspitttle: feel free to contact me through the email address listed on my site if you'd like to discuss this further.

SirCastor · Jul 11, 2006, 05:35 PM

programming in PHP is a load easier than writing in C anything. A database would be an easy solution, likewise, if you just wanted text file manipulation that would be pretty easy as well.

A really good place for all things PHP is (surprise) PHP.net Most everything there is well documented with a lot of user support for functions and commands. Beyond that, you can find virtually anything you need to online simply doing a google search for it.

besson3c · Jul 11, 2006, 05:52 PM

Originally Posted by SirCastor

programming in PHP is a load easier than writing in C anything. A database would be an easy solution, likewise, if you just wanted text file manipulation that would be pretty easy as well.

A really good place for all things PHP is (surprise) PHP.net Most everything there is well documented with a lot of user support for functions and commands. Beyond that, you can find virtually anything you need to online simply doing a google search for it.

He's right, it isn't hard at all to manage the basics. I got started with what is now the Webkit just by poking around with PHP and MySQL. Most of the complexity in this sort of thing comes with database association, developing rich CSS/AJAX interfaces, etc.

If you wanted, I could give you just the Webkit scripts and templates that generate Itinerary output. The templates inherit your website's CSS, so it should be pretty easy to drop them in in an unobtrusive way.

You could also just pick apart what I've done if you're the kind of person that learns better this way. They really aren't terribly complicated.

Ratspittle · Jul 11, 2006, 06:24 PM

Originally Posted by SirCastor

programming in PHP is a load easier than writing in C anything. A database would be an easy solution, likewise, if you just wanted text file manipulation that would be pretty easy as well.

A really good place for all things PHP is (surprise) PHP.net Most everything there is well documented with a lot of user support for functions and commands. Beyond that, you can find virtually anything you need to online simply doing a google search for it.

I looked at php.net. Considering most of this stuff looks like greek...example:

PHP has extremely useful text processing features, from the POSIX Extended or Perl regular expressions to parsing XML documents. For parsing and accessing XML documents, PHP 4 supports the SAX and DOM standards, and you can also use the XSLT extension to transform XML documents. PHP 5 standardizes all the XML extensions on the solid base of libxml2 and extends the feature set adding SimpleXML and XMLReader support.

....I have four web page jobs going right now, and like I said do not have the time to figure all this out. Also, google was the first place I looked. I searched for everything from cms to "user update-able web pages" and everything in between. I only posted here because I thought someone might have an easier solution than what I found, which wasn't much.

Bessom, I am going to email you in a little while about your webkit.
I do appreciate the input everyone....keep the suggestions coming if you have them.
-RS

SirCastor · 02:15 PM

http://aeiche.dyndns.org/test/writer/writer.php

There ya Go. That'll be $200

Please be gentle with the link, it's my personal machine, and if everyone swarms to it, The cable company is going to start asking questions.

Ratspittle · Jul 12, 2006, 05:05 PM

Originally Posted by SirCastor

http://aeiche.dyndns.org/test/writer/writer.php

There ya Go. That'll be $200

Please be gentle with the link, it's my personal machine, and if everyone swarms to it, The cable company is going to start asking questions.

Thank you sir (ha!), I will play round with it later. Cheers
-RS
PS the check is in the mail.

genevish · Jul 14, 2006, 01:55 PM

You need scripted functionality, yet you don't want to pay much for it, you don't like the free/cheap options out there, and you don't have time to learn how to customize/create your own solution. This is a difficult request to fill. I'd say learn the basics of PHP so you can code a simple solution for yourself (similar to what SirCastor is showing), but I'm a programmer myself. The solution he created is probably not more than 50 lines of PHP and could be included within the static pages you have now.

SirCastor · Jul 14, 2006, 02:17 PM

Originally Posted by genevish

You need scripted functionality, yet you don't want to pay much for it, you don't like the free/cheap options out there, and you don't have time to learn how to customize/create your own solution. This is a difficult request to fill. I'd say learn the basics of PHP so you can code a simple solution for yourself (similar to what SirCastor is showing), but I'm a programmer myself. The solution he created is probably not more than 50 lines of PHP and could be included within the static pages you have now.

53 actually, but that includes 14 lines of whitespace.