CMS - Do I need one? Do I make one?

[pluto2000xx]

I'm a web developer who's just starting up my own home based business. I've been designing sites for years, but always for the same company (as an employee). Updating content wasn't an issue, it was my job.

Now I'm building a couple of smaller sites. My clients have expressed an interest in maintaining the content on the site themselves.

They don't know HTML.

What is the best way for me to enable them to update their own site? (assuming I can't convince them to pay me to do it)

I'm guessing that I'll have this issue in the future too, so I'd like a suggestion that I can carry across to future sites.

A CMS, at least the ones I've searched on the internet, seems like overkill.
Am I better off to set up some ASP pages that grab content from a text file, then setup a form for them to change that text file?
Or, even better, a database, if they would be able to update it themselves?

What do you do for clients who want to maintain sites themselves?

Thanks!
Lee

[jamie]

hi lee,

Am I better off to set up some ASP pages that grab content from a text file, then setup a form for them to change that text file?
Or, even better, a database, if they would be able to update it themselves?

that's exactly what we do. it took a few goes to perfect, but now we have a standard and very light cms with a backend database which anyone can use to update their pages. we charge a small fee for licencing (any maintenance and repairs are included). so far people have been very happy.