Search for simple CMS stack

Tav I don’t know if your stacks would include a very simple CMS-style stack similar to the old Kuler one. Don’t want an Admin panel, don’t want complicated ANYTHING for client (or me either frankly.) Just a section on a page that they can log in and type with the usual edit bar. Even a simple Blog page they can log into and add stuff. Something easy that doesn’t involve excessive tech to do. The basics. I bet I’m not the only one who would really like to have this.

1 Like

Hejsan
Yes, that would be really nice. I forgot about Kuler’s Edits. I still have that stack. It is back from PHP 5 days. So it probably does not work.

Have you looked at Quick Editor Admin from 1LD?

Cheers,
Erwin

Erwin that looks interesting, I’ll look into it more. I hated that the old Kuler Edits overrode/deleted whatever was in the stack when that page was published. This one appears to deal with that issue thankfully.

@tav - what’s the best way to be notified of new Core info, and when it’s released?

Tried the subscribe field on the BWD site, but it goes to a missing page error.

Very intrigued about Core!

Yup, Quick Editor Admin doesn’t actually replace the content - it does nifty things by sneakily loading in content from elsewhere on the server when the page is loaded. The original content is still there and can be easily restored if needed.

Users can add content too; it’s not limited to editing existing content.

Furthermore, it’s pretty much fool proof. You as a designer can block content from being edited if you so desire and can leave notes that only appear in edit mode. You can even hide or show stacks depending if the viewer is in visitor or editor mode.

It’s pretty cool.

I use it as an entry level CMS for my clients. I “up” clients to Alloy for the more demanding webpages and I’ve been looking into TotalCMS too (but haven’t had a use case for it yet).

Cheers,
Erwin

It will be posted on here, on the BWD website and on madeforstacks.com

Yes sorry, Mailchimp closed my account because I didn’t send enough nauseating marketing nonsense to my subscribers :)

6 Likes

Perfect, I’ll stay tuned to all those places.

Take that, Mailchimp.

Thanks tav!

Alloy would do this.

Simple enough setup. You can create a blog with a simple login page to create new posts, or you can designate areas where that can be changed once logged in.

However Alloy is for Foundry only.

2 Likes

I’ve been in a front-end dev (and design) role for about 13 years now and most of my CMS experience is with really large projects on a MVC .NET platform with a team of people… I don’t really do any freelance. Occasionally I’ve worked with Wordpress and find it to be pretty straight-forward, but I really don’t like using other people’s plugins because I don’t want to worry about potential security vulnerabilities (maybe that is not as much of a concern for smaller projects?). Lately, I’ve been getting a lot of freelance requests for relatively simple 6 page or less sites and I’d like to start entertaining these opportunities. In the past I used to just straight up build people a site (html, css, js, maybe some php) but they can’t edit any content without me making changes in the markup.

TLDR: I just want something as close as possible to being able to dump a text editor in a paragraph tag that will enable a user to change their content in a CMS. What would you use for a small project?

1 Like

Either 1LD’s quick editor (for on page edits) or Easy CMS (for a separate admin page for the content).

Though I think Easy CMS requires something to lock/hide the CMS admin page (I have Total CMS which comes with more like a lock stack but is too much in complexity and cost for a few simple pages). Quick Editor has a protected login.

EasyCMS thankfully does include a login stack (“Protect”); it’d be a real fun experiment to release a CMS without one ;). It’d be like crowdsourcing the content of your site!

A logout stack is also provided (so you can place a logout button anywhere on your admin page).

Cheers,
Erwin

1 Like

Originally, when EasyCMS was first released, it did not have any login protection and required PageSafe to provide that function.

2 Likes

I use Easy CMS on many of my sites where the client doesn’t want to pay up for a Total CMS licence. Easy CMS doesn’t have a blog as such, but it’s relatively inexpensive and you can use it on as many sites as you wish. It’s a good starting point and if a client wants more, then it’s the start of the conversation for suggesting Total CMS.

I do use PageSafe rather than Protect as it has much more functionality and also allows simple ‘corporate’ branding on the login page(s).

Webyep by Stacks4Stacks is excellent. I have used it a couple of times for websites where the customer wants to be able to update the text, images and gallery themselves on their website. It uses PHP flat file system. If you need to back it up you just download the posts content folder via ftp, to restore just put the backup folder back again. You, yourself will need to get to grips with the installl of it, but from a customer point of view it is bulletproof and easy to use and I have it in use with one of my customers that is a technophobe.

Again though as mentioned previously here by others Quick Editor Admin 1LD is also excellent for a page by page content change. Very powerful at what it is designed to do, easy to backup (similar to Webyep) or just delete the user generated file on the server via FTP if want to revert back to the original text and images.

Just recently started using Alloy, that too is excellent, you pay once and use many times (although the dev does ask fo a small goodwill donation if using it extensively, which is fair enough). Again this works similar to Webyep and Quick Editor Admin by using PHP flat file and storing generated content in a folder on server. You backup and restore via FTP. It has a superb blogging system, but then you can expand this by adding user-generated ‘modules’ you can put in pages across your website that the user can modify through the admin panel. As previously mentioned here, Alloy does require you to use Foundry 3, but that’s no great shake because Foundry 3 is also a superb base to work with.

I found these three options work well for me as they all work well for customers that want to login to an admin panel and add content or make changes in an intuitive manner without complication on their part.

3 Likes

Will Webyep be overridden if the customer makes changes I am not aware of, then I make a change on that page and publish? Or is is structured similar to Quick Editor Admin in that client changes are not affected.

If I understand your question right, yes they will override any text or images if they make changes. The intention of Webyep (at least in my case) is for the client to write all their own text in the first place.

Think of the Webyep stacks being sections of blank canvas you place around the website, each with a unique ID name. When the user logs in and unlocks the page for themselves they can visit each unlocked page and edit, add, delete text or images in those designated sections. They can’t change the formatting and style, they can simply only change the words or image. You set the style as in bold, H1, H2, H3, italic, colour, font etc for the Webyep stack, they can’t change that bit.

1LD Quick editor admin works similar but different, you create the original text and images. The user can then log in and overide that. When doing that it basically makes a markdown file on the server and this gets displayed instead. The orginal text is still there but QEA will spot the new markdown file and display that instead. If you want to revert back to the orginal just go in to the folder on the server and delete the QEA generated markdown file, therefore it will no longer display and the original text will be back to displaying again.

My use case will be that I will have a page that I design with images and some text. I want to provide a Sections Pro (Tav) or Container (Foundation) block that the client can go in and add text and maybe a graphic. For example a block for class schedules and locations that will be edited by client. However if I change an image or graphic on THAT page, or have to re-publish all files, I don’t want the client block to get over-ridden. That’s my main issue with finding a simple solution without an Admin panel for technophobe clients.

With Easy CMS (and Page Safe) you can do this without any problems, exactly as you describe.
Text editing does not have to be on a page on the administration side, you can insert Easy CMS stacks directly on the public page (and make them visible only after logging in with Page Safe).

1 Like