In a world where content is king, I’d ideally like my clients to be able to update their own content without the need for a complex package such as Wordpress. Enter CushyCMS which basically allows editing of certain parts of teh page, and is easily made available by simply adding a class to the elements you wish to be editable.
Signing Up
Sign Up is free, unless you wish to brand the entire user interface then there are packages that allow for that. They guys at CushyCMS even have a video on their homepage that shows you exactly how the system works. It’s very simple, and I have no fears about my clients being able to use this.
Setting Up
To add a site, you simply enter it’s URL and then all the FTP information e.g. the username and password. CushyCMS makes this pretty painless, and even helps you along the way with useful error messages where needed.
The good part is that you can assign different roles to different e-mail addresses. For example, you can add yourself on as the web designer which means you can go in and change what you like really, whereas the “editors” can go in and see the pages available for them to edit and the like. Handy for those clients that have pages that only certain members of their company need access too - think Marketeers or maybe the MD needs his power-boner and wants access to everything :-).
Page Alterations
Simply adding a class of “cushycms” to any element instantly makes it editable by your clients. The editor is simple and elegant, and even images are handled nicely whereby if you have preset the images width and height it will remember these if you choose to repalce the image.
The times I have used it, what I have found is that with a bit of explaining, my clients have been more than happy with using it themselves. Sure, there has been times when they’ve still asked me to change things for them and if it is a case of being lazy then they will need pushing back, but if you keep charging for this when they can do it thsmselves, eventually they stop asking :-).
Examples
In your HTML file, you define the bits you want to be editable by adding class=”cushycms”
So a heading could be tagged as
<h1 class=”cushycms” title=”Heading”></h1>
and the editable content
<div class=”cushycms” title=”Main Content”></div>
Pros
- Very, very simple
- Good for small changes
- It’s FREE
Cons
- Certainly not a Wordpress replacement
- Allows edits of exiting pages, therefore the pages need to be created to begin with.
I am loving the simplicity of this website and ease of navigation!