Hello,

We design and build web sites for various businesses. We are looking for a tool which would allow us to grant our clients (via a password, etc) access to an easy-to-use web site edit tool so they can add photos, change text, add links, etc to their pages. We would only want them to be able to edit the body of the pages, not the headers, titles, etc.

Any suggestions?

Thank you.

There are a number of tools that can help you do something like this. The amount is actually a bit overwhelming.

If you perform a search for content management software (http://www.google.com/search?num=100&hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8&c2coff=1&q=content+management+software&btnG=Search) on google, you'll discover quite a few choices. It may take you a while to got though a lot of those, but the time you spend looking at the different options will give you an idea of all of the different functionality those have.

You choice will be based upon the business requirements of the people you are building the site for. It will also be based upon how much ability the both of you decide they should have to quickly and easily make changes to certain parts of the site.

Enabling clients to make their own changes to content is a great way to go.

For a more recognizable commercial product, Macromedia has a program called Contribute that might be worth looking at. If you use tools like Dreamweaver, the contribute program might be the tool for you:

http://www.macromedia.com/software/contribute/

An off the shelf package that you might think about (depending upon your clients' budget, and willingness to pay) is something like Manilla:

http://manila.userland.com/

A couple of open source alternatives include Drupal:

http://www.drupal.org/

and phpwebsite:

http://phpwebsite.appstate.edu/

There are a lot of alternatives. As I said, it wouldn't hurt to do a survey, and see what else is out there. I've been thinking of putting some pages together with the phpwebsite software.

There's a demo for this free software that's worth checking out, even if you have no intention of using something like this. It can give you an idea of some of the possibilities that software like this can bring you:

http://phpwebsite.appstate.edu/demo/0.9.x/

I hope you find something out there that you like, Stormlady. Let us know what you decide to use, and why, if you want.

Hi Stormlady! Welcome to the forum. :)

Hi,
I work for LeTourneau University in Texas, and we have been extremely successfull in implementing a content management system called OpenCMS. The great thing about this software is it's not only free, but it's open source. So our IT guys can freely make changes and other IT guys are also making changes, and we all share our changes/suggestions with each other to keep making it better.

hope that helps,
cj cunniff

Welcome to the forum, cj! :)

Hi all .. Just came across this and figured worth throwing my 2c worth in. We use a CMS called Mambo (link below) that's also open source. Reason being it provides a great base for us to develop sites for our clients on. There's plenty of developers like us around who can assist in adding specific functionality if required.

Hope you like it!

Scott

http://mamboserver.com/cat/Demo_Site/

This is a rather peculiar situation. Does this happen often when somebody asks for suggestions without providing vital information, in this case, what kind of IT system is already present. Unfortunately, the OP did not qualify what exactly they were looking for.

Well there is a GREAT site http://www.opensourcecms.com/

You can actually TRY all the major (and some not so major) opensource CMS systems....

Saves having to install them, you can just try them out for free!!!

Love Mambo myself....

Have fun!

Simon

Welcome to the forum Simon! :standingw