Help me figure out if a CMS will work for this.

SoundTheSurrender

Diamond Member
Mar 13, 2005
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I am thinking about doing a internship with a non-profit company to make their site more dynamic. They want it convereted to Dreamweaver or FrontPage but I feel that isn't dynamic enough.

This is the scope.

Project Scope: Take content from existing website in PHP format and change to a more common format i.e. Front Page or Dreamscape that will give us complete control for updates. The goal of the project is a newly designed, fresh, different, interesting and fun website that is visitor friendly. We want something for all ages as well as individual and business members. The sky is the limit as far as creativity goes and the limit of our web host. The intern would only be required to be in the office as necessary. Much of the work can be done from their own computer at home or school. We would require the intern to provide us with weekly updates in our office at a minimum to ensure the project is moving forward and in the right direction and for guidance and input.

Other items of interest: We would also like to Integrate Blogs, Pod Casts, E-Newsletters, E-Surveys into the site.

We also want the ability to connect to other social websites.

Before I ask them about other social sites, does anyone know what they are talking about?

They have a home, About Us, Recycling, Calendar, Get Involved as main pages but then it breaks down to other pages for example

About Us has

Who we are, Principals, Focus... etc.

I was thinking about using Drupal or cmsmadesimple assuming they have MySQL with their service.

What do you guys think?


 

911paramedic

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2002
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They want it convereted to Dreamweaver or FrontPage but I feel that isn't dynamic enough.
:confused: Those are authoring tools and are only as good as the programmer/coder. You can do the same thing with notepad if you wanted to.

I suggest you look into something like Joomla.

 

Leros

Lifer
Jul 11, 2004
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I haven't done any web design since before Web 2.0, but Dreamweaver/Frontpage and dynamic seem to be incompatible ideas.
 

911paramedic

Diamond Member
Jan 7, 2002
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Originally posted by: Leros
I haven't done any web design since before Web 2.0, but Dreamweaver/Frontpage and dynamic seem to be incompatible ideas.

Dreamweaver is good to write code with, simply because it has auto-complete functions and color pickers. Frontpage? Never ever ever ever... But like I said earlier, they are for authoring, you need to know what you want before you can even start a project.

Since I downloaded notepad++ I've only opened Dreamweaver a few times.

Do you want to use AJAX and have it query a database and update the page in real-time? Do you want CSS hidden elements to show up when you mouse over certain areas of your site? You need to know what you want in the end before you start, or you will chase your tail.

I wish I could help with the dynamic part, but since they depricated the <blink> tag I don't know what to say. Background music is always nice...
 

bchalker

Golden Member
Feb 17, 2000
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ExpressionEngine (ExpressionEngine.com) is an incredible (and free) CMS that can handle what you are looking for. It's PHP based, but is also the most flexible I've seen, allowing for your own CSS designed sites to incorporate the EE code and tags. Works beautifully.

Boyink has a great tutorial on setting up a site using it. It's the most detailed walkthrough for a CMS I've seen:
Boyink Tutorial
 

Red Squirrel

No Lifer
May 24, 2003
70,641
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www.anyf.ca
notepad++ FTW. It's all I use for any type of coding. C++ I will use dev c++ as it has the built in compiler and auto completion stuff, but for most other coding, notepad++ all the way.
 

SoundTheSurrender

Diamond Member
Mar 13, 2005
3,126
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Thanks everyone!

Originally posted by: bchalker
ExpressionEngine (ExpressionEngine.com) is an incredible (and free) CMS that can handle what you are looking for. It's PHP based, but is also the most flexible I've seen, allowing for your own CSS designed sites to incorporate the EE code and tags. Works beautifully.

Boyink has a great tutorial on setting up a site using it. It's the most detailed walkthrough for a CMS I've seen:
Boyink Tutorial

This looks perfect!