Lightweight alternative to MODx

Hi, my friend want’s to build a homepage and has asked me for advice...

I have used MODx alot, so that’s what I would use, but I feel it could be a bit to complex for him. I have used WordPress but feel that it could be a bit too blog-oriented. Does anyone have a suggestion for a simple and versitile cms that I could recommend – maybe some sort of MODx-lite? Is TextPattern a good choice (can you use a WYSIWYG-editor in TP?) or maybe Silverstripe?

Kind regards Carl

He builds guitars and wants to showcase a few of them, post information about guitar-building, provide contact information etc. The site has to be dual-language, but because of the limited content it shouldn’t be hard in any cms.

He is quite computer illiterate, but I will probably build the templates for him so the cms shouldn’t be to limiting (I hate having to hack the cms to make things work the way I want)...

Does he really need a CMS?

It sounds like he needs a nice looking brochure site. Building one with XHTML and CSS would work nicely. If he is computer literate like you say then he should be able to cut and paste new paragraphs etc without messing up the design. Once he knows what the CSS (divs and classes) arer doing he should be able to maintain his site nicely.

If he needs a shopping cart or needs to post text regularly then this might not work for him. In that case CMSMadesimple might be a good choice...

You/he should check out opensourceCMS and see what seems like the best fit for the project.

CMSMS is nice and simple, as the name states. But honestly MODx will do the trick, it is a bit complex at first but once the admin gets the hang of it it is really not that bad (specially if he will be mostly editing pages), and you will most likely need to hold his hand through it anyway. Bite the bullet and go with MODx.

I’m doing this less and less, but on brochure sites where the client just wants to edit text, I used to build a very simple content editing system using FCKeditor. I got the process down so it only took me about an hour to implement. Then the user just logs in, browses the site, clicks an edit button if they want to edit content.. But the more familiar I become with MODx, the more it pains me to do stuff like that anymore ;-)

MODx with QuickEdit is about as easy as they come, and you can also set up limited user accounts to simplify the Manager for them (and there’s also the Manager Manager resource, which I’ve never used but I understand allows you to restructure the manager interface for unique purposes).

Quote from: ZAP at Jan 04, 2008, 01:11 PM

and there’s also the Manager Manager resource

Yes, this has worked really well for me in the past. I have a designer client who essentially refused to let any of his clients see the MODx manager ("don’t look behind the curtain!!"), but I managed to simplify things enough with ManagerManager to it acceptable for him.

Textpattern + TinyMCE + Lightbox

But Textpattern really sucks when you need real subsections.

Textpattern will do, but so would wordpress if you would install and configure it for him and give him a small tutorial. Or you could always use html , it give a sort of "stone age" look.