Gallery

We like your style

Posted on 24 Apr 2006 at 12:05

Paul Ockenden looks at CSS and definition lists, while Mark Newton is forced to tailor a website with Access

But things move on, and rather than go to the expense and time of coding their own CMS, many designers are now using off-the-shelf solutions and integrating these into their clients' websites. Mark recently spent an enjoyable few days researching, downloading and installing various commercial CMS, a lot of which are open source and run on PHP. However, Mark was looking specifically for ASP or .NET solutions to avoid having to alter open-source code and to host PHP. There are dozens of candidates - just take a look at www.aspin.com for ASP versions, and at the extremely good www.opensourcecms.com for almost all of the CMS systems out there.

What soon became obvious was that some of these products offer almost unlimited capabilities, including forums and email list servers being added with just the click of a button. However, what Mark was looking for was something that wouldn't scare this particular client with an over-complicated interface, and it was this aspect that took some finding in the end. Mark settled on allinta (www.allinta.com): while not free at $79 per website, charging for it does at least mean there's some incentive for the company to continue development and provide support.

Mark particularly liked allinta's simple user interface, its simple setup and the ease with which one's own web page templates could be added to it. Normally, web pages are served from a database, but if you only have Access available for performance reasons you can use allinta to generate static HTML pages to build your site. Should your client need a web form for their users to fill in, let them build one themselves - a few clicks in allinta and it's done, and the same with calendars and newsletters. The client doesn't have to bother you with all this stuff, which leaves you to concentrate on the cool functionality for their site that will really set them apart.

If you need something more complex, try doITlive (www.doitlive.com). This is aimed more at the web-savvy user who's happy with its complex interface. However, its capabilities of building forums and its much more versatile authoring-approval system mean it could be a system for a webmaster to replace their copy of Dreamweaver for maintaining the site once the templates have been built. There are three levels of licence, ranging from the Lite for a single site at €150, through the Pro for multiple sites at €300, right up to the unlimited sites Dev version at a €800.

Before tackling any web development project these days, you should take a look at some of the stuff others have written. And before you commit to using any such product, look at its support forum and do a search for security problems (if there are any, have they been fixed and how quickly?). The search engines are your friend in this task, so use them wisely.

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