Cms In Existing Site Template 03.09.08
I’m a web designer who still designs with FrontPage 2003. I have a typical 3-column website designed in FrontPage using a FrontPage dynamic web template.
So whenever I want to make universal changes to the site, I have to open all 30+ pages of the site in FrontPage, along with the index.dwt page (the FrontPage dynamic web template page). I make changes to the template and save it (which then updates all the OPEN pages). Then I click ‘Save All’ to save all the updated pages.
I only have ONE editable section in all the webpages - the middle ‘body’ section of the page. The template updates everything else at the top, bottom and right and left columns.
This process is a pain, and beyond that, it’s not practical for anyone else to add pages to the site or make changes to existing pages. So I was wondering if there is an affordable way to use my existing page template and integrate a data-driven CMS, so that anyone can login and create new pages, with all their content going into the BODY of the page (the only editable region).
Then all I’d have to do is re-save the page template (and maybe copy it into the data/CMS folder to make universal changes to the entire site.
I don’t use CSS at this point, and my FrontPage-created template is standard table-built HTML. Whenever I’ve looked into something like Joomla or other CMS applications, it seemed like a whole different animal. So I’ve stayed away from that.
I love the complete control I have in FrontPage to structure the site exactly as I want it from the ground up. So if there’s a way to take that AS IT IS NOW and plug a CMS into it, so that anyone I register can login and publish articles (just as they would on a forum) without having to worry about the template or any of that, THAT’S WHAT I WANT.
We don’t have a large budget and need to have this done as inexpensively as possible - that is, if it is possible.
I can e-mail you the direct link to the site, though I’d prefer not to publish it here. (It’s a mainstream site, nothing unusual. Just trying to avoid site-idea copycats, if I can help it.)
Thanks!
