CMS for small site

roll your own or off-the-shelf?

[mgm_03]

There was a recent thread on the topic of CMS but after reviewing the responses, I'm still in a quandry....newbie here.

For purposes of updating small sites for a 1or 2 person consulting, attorney, or other professional practice, there are a number of WYSIWYG tools. CutePHP/CuteNews, htmlArea, Editize, SPAW are the ones I know. CuteNews appears blog oriented.

For the CMS part, many off the shelf apps seem over-kill for the small site owner (Mambo, MovableType seem popular). I am curious what others are doing to address the site update requests. If you have written your own CMS, are you using a database or text files?

[macrost]

I usually write my own and have everything stored in a sql db.

[encyclo]

For the simple stuff, I've tried a million CMSs, many of which as you say are far too heavy for such a use. You don't really need a database when you've got less than 100 pages and one editor who makes minor changes from time to time.

I eventually took a simple wiki script which used a template and stored everything in text files and rebuilt it as a basic one-person CMS. The client just clicks on a admin link on any page, enters a password then edits the text directly on the site. Anything more complicated than that they call me - and in my experience, they don't need to call often unless it's for a change which a more complicated CMS woudn't do automatically anyway (template changes, etc.).

[ogletree]

We used sitesage it worked quite nice. It was very easy to use. Also they have some workarounds that help with SEO. The support was great. You have to ask about the SEO stuff.