Noobie question: CMS for content only

need CMS to change content

[screamerUSA]

Hello All,

Noobie here, I have a question that I've been researching for weeks to no avail. I have a site that I would like to be able to update the content on several pages: products.html, reviews.html, recordings.html & link.html. I would like a simple CMS that I could put a tag under the flash header and above the footer and edit the content in between. My web page designers says it's possible but wants to charge me $1000.00 to do the work. I don't know, but for some reason, this seems high to me.

1) Can anyone suggest a CMS that will do the job?

2) Can anyone suggest where I can hire someone to do the work for me at a reasonable cost?

I'm sure this is not a unique request, but I've been searching for so long it's getting old already.

Thanks in advance

[edited by: ergophobe at 7:32 pm (utc) on Feb 22, 2010]
[edit reason] Personal URL removed as per Terms of Service [/edit]

[ergophobe]

Welcome screamer!

So does your site exist currently as a set of html files on the server?

Are you able to do any work yourself? In other words, how much of a noobie are you? Can you get in there and do basic HTML edits?

There are a few options, none of which will be free. Assuming you have a design that you're reasonably happy with and your goal is not a redesign, but just to translate that design to some templated site where design/navigation changes will propagate to all pages.

Technology

Simple.
You could create a very simple site that would use something like the PHP "auto prepend" and "auto append" functions. Then you would simply do this:

1. put all your header stuff in file1.html
2. put all your footer stuff in file2.html

The actual content files exist without header and footer and those just get folded in on the fly. In this case, you would simply need to strip all the header and footer stuff from each file and set up the server to add it back in on the fly. Simple, but it only gets you so far.

Next step up
You could transfer the site to something like Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, etc etc etc. That would give you all the CMS advantages.

Methods

Now how do you do this?

1. Learn how to do it yourself if you're on a super tight budget, but that's unlikely to be a great use of your time. It's not impossible though - there are many tutorials for moving a design to any major CMS.

2. go to a place like elance, rentacoder, odesk and create a job to say "move static site to Wordpress" (as one example) and take bids on the job.

3. go to one of the shops that specialize in PSD to HTML (search on things like PSD HTML). Many of them will also convert to CMS themes. I don't know how they handle taking an existing site if you don't have a layered Photoshop file, but I would think they could work with that. I've never used any of these services, but I think they're in the $300-$500 range (I could be way off on this), depending on complexity, and it would be up to you to move the actual content parts in to Wordpress (or whatever) and set it up on your server.

[screamerUSA]

Thanks ergophobe,

I "could" do some of the work myself, but I've had enough bad experiences that I'd rather keep to doing something I'm good at instead of possibly making a mess of such an important part of my business. In other words, I know when to keep my hands off.

I just viewed the source of the site and what I see confuses me. The header and side bar graphics are broken down into "many" separate .gifs, "images/index_12.gif" "images/spacer_10.gif" and the content that appears on the page itself is not viewable in source mode.

I think I would be way more comfortable if I turned this over to someone who specializes in web development.

I think my best bet is to refer to one of the sources you gave me and take it from there.

I don't mind spending the money if I have to, but $1K seemed like alot to do this. Especially when I read that I could perhaps do it myself.

One thing I do not understand is where does CMS come into play w/ hosting. Does a host have to be say, Wordpress specific?

Thanks again for the prompt reply.

...screamer