By rmcglinn on

Hi, I am from Australia and I specialise in building low priced websites for customers who would normally not be able to afford engaging a more expensive web design company. I don't have much html or coding knowledge and I basically purchase pre-built templates designed in Microsoft Frontpage and customise the graphics and content to suit.

I have recently designed/customised a website for a customer and uploaded his new website to a Linux Apache webhosting server that is PHP and MySQL enabled.

My customer loves the new website but has just asked me if he if I could set up his new website so that he is able to edit his new website on-line without having to purchase and learn Microsoft Frontpage.

I am assuming what he is talking about is incorporating a Content Management System that he can make changes through any web browser.

Having had absolutely no experience with Content Management Systems I was wondering is there a way I can implement a Content Management System now that the site has been built already or is it too late and would I have to start again from scratch?

Is it possible for a CMS like Drupal to be implemented after a site has been built? Is there a way I can implement it so that my customer doesn’t mess up my original design/customisation? Can I make design changes to the site using Frontpage can this be done after Drupal has been implemented?

Thanks in advance for any help. Most appreciated.

Rob McGlinn

Comments

bertboerland’s picture

bertboerland commented

if the customer doesnt have too much content, that can easy be transferred into drupals engine. the customer can afterwards with a little training publish the content him/her self (less than 30" training) with for example the htmlarea from.

regarding transfering the layout, that might be more difficult. logog's and the easy part of stylesheets can be done in a sec, but the complete layout is far more difficult. I would say give it a try for yourself, you will see you get a lot more customers!

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groets


bertb

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groets
bert boerland

sepeck’s picture

sepeck commented

implementing with a CMS like Drupal.
More up front planning and work. (not that much more when you learn it, it's actually faster).
No third party software for your customer to purchase.
Customer doesn't mess up your layout design in Front Page (grrrrrrrrrrr).
Customer can update from any web brawser.

-Steven Peck
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Test site, always start with a test site.
Drupal Best Practices Guide

Bèr Kessels’s picture

Bèr Kessels commented

Since a CMS is often misunderstood. It is very different from a files-based website.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&c2coff=1&safe=off&q=moving+from+stati...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Content_management_system

For drupal it would mean you need to find a correct set of modules, to make the behaviour of th site, the way your client likes it.
And you must make a theme, from your current layout.

And if this solved you problem, would you be so kind to report back that it helped? This will
help others whom are looking for the same solution.

[Ber | Drupal Services webschuur.com]