Hi guys,

I've been looking for a user-friendly cms for a while now. All I want essentially is for my clients to be able to modify text and swap images themselves - nothing major.

But the more I look into the array of options available, my mind just implodes! I was looking into Business Catalyst for a little bit, but I found the admin area a little confusing at times, and if I had trouble I'm sure the client would too! So until they fix that, I'm looking into other options...

Wordpress seems to be an obvious choice, everyone recommends it, saying it's extremely user-friendly, and from what I've seen it is (if you're using a template). But that's not my thing...I want something a little more unique. So I started exploring the 'build your own template' idea.

Now I'm comfortable coding a static page with HTML and CSS, that's what I do, but what I'm not familiar with is PHP. And it seems to me that a knowledge of PHP is almost essential to write your own Wordpress template. Am I wrong? Have I missed something?

And how would the process go exactly? Do I simple code the static site like I normally would, and then enter tags within the code? Because that's what it sounds like, I'm just not 100%...

The other one I was considering is Drupal, however I haven't looked into it yet.

Can anyone shed a bit of light on this subject? Keeping in mind, all I want is for the client to easily be able to change text and images themselves.

Thanks in advance! So confused...

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Ben - Freelance Web Designer
Webfunk Designs | www.webfunkdesigns.com.au

May I suggest http://templatic.com/

I have just started building http://www.fraserisland.com.au with it, not finished yet, but seems pretty user friendly.

Don

i'd say learn a little PHP and go with wordpress, there's so much you can do to extend/customise it.

Am I right to assume that building my own template with no PHP knowledge would be extremely difficult? Or have I read it wrong?

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Ben - Freelance Web Designer
Webfunk Designs | www.webfunkdesigns.com.au

I wouldn't say extremely difficult, might be a bit of a learning curve but that's the best way to learn - by getting stuck into it. There's a tonne of info out there on how to edit wordpress templates, you almost don't need to understand how the PHP works, just know what to copy/paste and where.

A good place to start would be to setup a test site and hack the bejeebus out of one of the existing template files, i.e. single.php for posts or page.php for pages

...alternatively you could just go nuts on style.css without ever needing to touch PHP, but it's worth learning a little bit of PHP nonetheless. There's a lot of cool stuff you can do with even a basic understanding.

Wordpress is user friendly. Even more so with 3.3.

Add "White Label CMS" plugin and you can hide all the elements you don't want them to see.

Essentially making only the "Text & Images" available to edit.

Definitely go with WordPress, and in saying that you would be mad not to look at one of the frameworks such as Genesis or Thesis.

The initial learning curve may be a bit steep but I can guarantee that once you get your head around how they work you will find that it will save you hours in the future (especially as you build up your own custom code library of reusable functions).

I agree! I recently got Genesis and have slowly started converting all my websites over to it.

Thanks to everyone for the information!

Would it be a good idea to write the static site first, THEN alter it towards a WP theme?

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Ben - Freelance Web Designer
Webfunk Designs | www.webfunkdesigns.com.au