Thread

If I develop a web site with the EE system, can it be developed in such a way that I as the web developer can turn over maintenance and updates to a non-technical person.

For instance, take the EE home page.  Is that or could that be set up so that a given user could go into the control panel and quickly and easily change the text in the feature tabs.

Basically, once the site is designed, can the content be easily changed and updated.

Not sure if my question makes sense.  The closes I’ve worked with in the CMS field is Wordpress.

thanks

Basically, it all depends on how you develop a site. Yes, it is definitely possible to create a site that will allow non-technical people to maintain it, create new content, etc. There will be some end user training involved, but generally it means being able to fill out a few web forms.

Depending on the needs of your client, this will involve a certain development effort, though. My suggestion would be to simply try EE for yourself.

Surfer,

Indeed, it all depends on how you develop the site.  Elements like Rich Text Editor areas (using TinyMCE or similar add-on), configurable columns, automated meta tag collection, etc. can make the majority of site editing easy for a non-technical person.  What I tell my clients is:

If you want to make day-to-day changes to your site, add, removed, modify content, no problem. If you want new features added, that’s when you’ll have to call me back.

It’s hard to anticipate every need that a client may have in the future.

Thanks for the replies.  I watched the tutorials, which I should have done first.  The answer, like both of you said appears to be yes, but with some conditions and training.

Thanks again for the responses.

Just FYI:

We use EE to power our high school website. We have it set up so different departments can log in and post announcements and news items. It works very well. We are going through an accreditation process, and we are posting all relevant forms into a weblog with some custom fields.

Our users are low-tech, and they aren’t having any trouble at all with the process. I had to make sure they were posting to the right categories, but that is about it.

You may be aware that EE has stand-alone-entry-form (SAEF) and a separate stand-alone-edit-form - I actually don’t use these, as I find the control panel a friendly place. EE does a nice job restricting access to only those places you want people to have access to, so for example, the science folks can post to the science section of the site, but not the math section.

Best of luck!

Depending on the needs of your client, this will involve a certain development effort, though. My suggestion would be to simply try EE for yourself.

I don’t think that demo is much help. In fact, I would go as far as saying that in EE’s current form, that demo is going to turn people off more than get them excited about the product. Without a good default template and a way to “quick start”, EE is tough to understand at first.

It worked perfectly well for me. I actually got to get in there and get my hands dirty right off the bat. That’s really all I needed or wanted.

With the right setup, EE can be very user-friendly. Of course, for a developer it’s always more work to set up a site the client is going to maintain themselves, and for the client there is a learning curve involved.
But I have clients who even have problems sending an e-mail attachment who maintain their own site content with EE without difficulties 😊

My 2-cents:

If I develop a web site with the EE system, can it be developed in such a way that I as the web developer can turn over maintenance and updates to a non-technical person.

That’s totally dependent upon a number of factors: 1) how much responsibility you turn over, 2) how much experience the non-technical person has, 3) how you set up the site for content entry and templates (which usually change the look and feel of an EE site), and so on.

For instance, take the EE home page.  Is that or could that be set up so that a given user could go into the control panel and quickly and easily change the text in the feature tabs.

Yes. And no. Though generally ‘yes’ if you set it up appropriately. I prefer that content people stay away from templates, so I’ll build extra weblogs (content) where they enter content by date and it simply ‘shows up’ there it’s supposed to show up.

Basically, once the site is designed, can the content be easily changed and updated.

If, by content, you mean entries, then, yes, that’s easily done. However, if, by content, you also mean rearranging content on a page, adding or subtracting other page elements (not entries) via templates, that’s not so easily done.

The closes (sic) I’ve worked with in the CMS field is Wordpress (sic).

The differences are substantial. WP is very good for the non-technical weblog user who selects a design they like, clicks to make it go live, then simply adds content (categories, too). That’s about it. Want to rearrange the home page? Sorry. That’s not so easy in WP. Want to place some advertising here and there? Sorry. Not so easy in WP.

However, with the right template groups, templates, and weblog setup, all those extra requirements can be made quite easily in EE, certainly more so than in WP.

No. When in doubt (i.e., if not content), it will require developer help. That’s my view…David H