What solution do you offer...

...when a customer want to edit and add pages themselves

[le_gber]

one of my prospective customer asked me to provide him with a solution whereby he would be able to add pages to his website.

I usually provide web maintenance for a small fee but he's set in his position.

Because of low budget issues I thought of setting up some kind of CMS (like Macromed Contribute). what do you guys offer when a similar situation arises?

thanks

Leo

[SEOMike]

Ask him if he has frontpage. If not, send him to the microsoft trial version. Give him FTP information and wish him the best.

Be srue to mention that if he blows up his site, your fee to fix it will be more expensive than it is for you to do the small edits.

Has worked for me before :)

Good Luck.

[stuntdubl]

I've been pretty happy with contribute in a lot of cases in the past. It's user friendly, and you can keep owners from breaking MOST of the site, while relieving yourself of the monotony of micro-changes.

Pretty good basic way to go.

[superbird]

can you build the thing around the WordPress platform? the new version lets you build static pages as well as news items

[Kubano]

we are pretty happy with contribute. We habe 14 content managers for different languages and they are not html experts... contribute is very intuitive.
However it collapses very often...

[le_gber]

cheers guys,

Be srue to mention that if he blows up his site, your fee to fix it will be more expensive than it is for you to do the small edits.

SEOMike - that's an idea :-)

It's user friendly, and you can keep owners from breaking MOST of the site

stuntdubl- thanks - do you know if the site is designed using XHTML and CSS-P will contribute choke or will it display it properly? What happens if you use includes for the main part of the site (nav, footer, header etc...)? Also how easy is it to add new pages and update the navigation if using SSI? On a table based - SSIless design?

can you build the thing around the WordPress platform

superbird - will look into that - I'd never heard of it

However it collapses very often...

Kubano - what do you mean? Does it make the site collapse or does it crashes the computer? How big is the site? (mine would be 5-10 pages only so limited resources needed - no database running or anything.

thanks for your feedback.

Leo

[Easy_Coder]

If you hook em up with FP then use it as an opportunity to sell training services.

[rocknbil]

I have to say I'm seeing a big trend in these types of users. Everyone wants to do it themselves but doesn't want to learn how. I say we gang up on 'em and charge triple for our CMS'es. :-)

All kidding aside - if you really think about it, if you charge for the setup of the CMS and put your time into getting more customers, it's less work for you and everyone's got good things to say about you. Comes a time to just let the whole control of the project issue go. When they can't do something, you were very helpful and you will be the first one they call.

[Easy_Coder]

wants to do it themselves but doesn't want to learn how.

That is opportunity; take advantage and sell services...

[cyril kearney]

Once a website has all its basic functionality clients often want to control costs. They look for ways to unload work from our higher priced consultants to their own lower priced staff.

This often allows me to sell another project that trains and enables this shift. Increasingly I am offering clients services to offload the work to offshore outsourced people. Generally this cost is a third of the cost of US based consultants. Offshore costs of $160 a day is the going rate in my area (metro New York City).

I see it as a choice of diminishing my profitability in the near term rather than losing the client entirely. Hopefully some of this saved money funds future projects.

[Kubano]

@le_gber:

yes, contribute makes the computer crash sometimes, the FTP connection, the program crashs it self.

The site is quite big, however no dynamic.
There are a lot of people in forums complaining about the same.

kubano

[webtress]

I say we gang up on 'em and charge triple for our CMS'es

Now that rocks!

[BwanaZulia]

Zope/CMF/Plone

All TTW with good CMS.

BZ

[mcjohnson]

I am sold on a product called Webedit Pro by INterspire. It is a PHP based CMS, very configurable, locks down design while opening up content for editing. It's rebrandable, you can mark it up, and the clients love it. It's a web-based CMS that can be used from any browser any where.

Thr problem with getting them to buy FP is that they have to be at their own machine to do the updates.

That's my two cents.