Web page editing/management panels

tetech

I've got to let a secretary maintain some web pages on a VPS, so I'm after software/tool recommendations anyone would like to give!

My usual workflow is to design/edit pages in a text editor, test the staging site, commit to SVN then minify and push to production. All text/command line - yeah old school. I do not use panels for anything.

Clearly this does not work for the secretary, so I'm after a more user-friendly way of doing at least the page editing. Typically "page editing" means changing banner text, adding/removing pictures from a list, and minor stuff like that. I do not need a full VPS panel - no email, no user creation/deletion, no DB management, no HTTP server admin stuff. Doesn't have to be free. She's used to Wix, if that puts it in context.

I guess an alternative is for her to have shared hosting as a staging account and to rsync it to the VPS.

Suggestions welcome, thanks.

AndyMcFadden

WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Hugo, Hexo.

InceptionHosting

@tetech said: I guess an alternative is for her to have shared hosting as a staging account and to rsync it to the VPS.

If you think about it, that might actually be the better first option.

tetech

@AndyMcFadden said:
WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Hugo, Hexo.

Maybe I should have mentioned. We've got a four-figure custom site not using any page builders or templates which is fast & clean. We don't want anything that will mess up the pages by inserting CSS, JS, etc. Adding an image should mean adding an <img> tag and not re-building the page.

WordPress is out, but thanks for the others in your list, I'll take a look at them!

vyas

Go for a flat file CMS

Bludit does the job very well. Or even Grav

You can create a staging site for both as subdomain or folders

tetech

@AnthonySmith said:

@tetech said: I guess an alternative is for her to have shared hosting as a staging account and to rsync it to the VPS.

If you think about it, that might actually be the better first option.

Very open to that. The files she'll be editing would only require a very basic shared hosting plan. Since she'd only be editing static files, I could also just put a CDN in front of the shared hosting and forget the rsync, leaving the VPS running the heavier stuff.

I guess it doesn't change the original question, in that I'd need the shared hosting provider to have an appropriate page editing facility which doesn't screw up the pages. It just wouldn't be my responsibility to maintain said facility.

tetech

@vyas said:
Go for a flat file CMS

Bludit does the job very well. Or even Grav

You can create a staging site for both as subdomain or folders

Is that WYSIWYG? (Never heard of either, sorry for the dumb question)

vyas

@tetech said:

@vyas said:
Go for a flat file CMS

Bludit does the job very well. Or even Grav

You can create a staging site for both as subdomain or folders

Is that WYSIWYG? (Never heard of either, sorry for the dumb question)

Yes...
https://demo.bludit.com/

AlwaysSkint

Bludit looks like a potential replacement for my basic Pixie site. Thanks @vyas !
Looks even simpler/easier than Pagekit.

tetech

@vyas said:

@tetech said:

@vyas said:
Go for a flat file CMS

Bludit does the job very well. Or even Grav

You can create a staging site for both as subdomain or folders

Is that WYSIWYG? (Never heard of either, sorry for the dumb question)

Yes...
https://demo.bludit.com/

Thanks, this has set me on a good path of what to look for. I also saw Perch which doesn't require a theme and can be used for existing sites. Not free ($70). The ability to back-fit using existing/plain HTML without creating a "theme" is important.

yoursunny

In 2006, my college organized a contest between housing units.
I made a custom CMS so that participants can maintain their online pages that has the "popular vote" button.

I had my designer boy prepare several templates, each with four spaces for photos and one space for rich text. Then, I made an ASP.Net application for the participants to upload/replace photos and edit rich text in TinyMCE (they can paste from Microsoft Word if desired). Everything gets generated into static HTML pages. Clean markup and clean URI.

The only requests support personnel received were lost passwords. Nobody had any difficulty operating the editor.
Participants had the option to create and host their page elsewhere and embed the vote button, but only 1 of 50 took that option.

I built this system in 3 days (editor only, excluding the PHP for voting). You can build one for your secretary in 3 days too.

tetech

@yoursunny said: You can build one for your secretary in 3 days too.

Not really interested in spending 3 days to replicate something that is already available, but thanks for your suggestion!

So far I'm liking vyas' suggestion to focus on flat file CMS. It seems the main criteria is to find ones which can easily be used with existing sites rather than restructuring them to use a 'theme'. At least Surreal CMS and Perch seem to do it. Concrete5, SilverStripe and CMSMS seem to require some type of templating.

willie

Maybe a wiki? I use gitit, which has an apt package, so very simple installation. It uses git as backend so you can git push after things look good.

AngelofMusic

Bludit is really nice and easy to use, so for a Wix user it might be fine. You can plug a theme in real quickly and be and up running pretty soon with any kind of layout.