CMS for RapidWeaver by Joe Workman

@Trystero
You can make one admin page for every page of your site, or you could make one admin page, and on that page, make a Tabbed admin area, where each tab can be a different page, and the tab name would be the name of the page. That is how I would set it up.

Far be it for me to disagree with Joe, but I’d design your Content page first, using placeholder pictures/text getting the design right AND THEN create the Admin page to fill those placeholders.

@LaPan Since he wants to migrate an existing site, you want to design the admin page first so that you can save the existing content form your page into the CMS. This way you don’t lose it.

So much carping over the pricing. I don’t get it. If you feel it is “overpriced”, and there is a cheaper product that accomplishes what you are trying to do, simply buy the other product. Many users can get away with the cheaper, more basic version - which is half the cost, and can be used on an unlimited number of websites. If not, you are likely dealing with a larger site with specific needs, or are probably building the site for a client (and charging them for it). Calling his pricing scheme “draconian” is ridiculous. If Joe has overestimated his products value, it will sell poorly, and he will be forced to reevaluate his products worth and its pricing. However, I am willing to bet that many of us feel the product is fairly priced. Time will tell on that.

I have never whined about pricing for one reason… I want our developers to be prosperous and keep making amazing things for all of us to use (and not leave to develop for other platforms or pursue other interests).

I bought the Easy CMS. It does what I need it to do, and was simple to set up and work with. So far I am very pleased with the results. Thanks to Joe for offering us all another CMS option. This is one of the main things my clients always ask for.

Minor gripes are:
-there is no demo version for the Easy CMS.
-no built in security for the Admin page. I think that securing a content editing page would be of paramount concern. Having to buy, and install another module to make that page safe and secure is kind of lame. If this is not an issue, I would like to see some more discussion about it. I hid the admin page so it would not show up, but am not sure that is enough of a safeguard to rely on.

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@Sassafras thanks for the comments. Let me address your gripes.

there is no demo version for the Easy CMS

Because Easy CMS works like normal stacks, and does not have any licensing scheme, its not possible to have a demo. However, since the text and image features in Total CMS are the same (mostly) you can demo Total CMS and have a pretty darn good idea how Easy CMS will work for you.

no built in security for the Admin page

I hemed and hawed about this for a long time. I already had a great product in Page Safe. It is a generalized tool that can be used in more cases than just Easy CMS. By keeping them separate, I was able to keep the price of Easy CMS down. Remember that both products can still be used on an unlimited amount of websites. However, I think that this could be a perfect opportunity to offer a bundle with both products.

Thanks again for the feedback.

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A CMS Bundle (Total CMS+EasyCMS) would also be great. :wink:

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Thanks for the speedy reply. I actually had more of a time figuring out that there was no demo version for the easy version, than I was upset by it.

On the security thing… it must have been a concern enough to bundle it into the full version. I get leaving features out to differentiate the two products and price points, but that one omission is a whopper to swallow. I simply can’t imagine anyone being comfortable having a wide open CMS that is open to all (if you know where the page is). I bought your PageSafe stack, and it fixes the problem (at half the cost of EasyCMS). So, some minor carping there, lol.

Overall though it works great and was easy to set up. I did have some odd moments before I realized the new page suffixes were .php, and not .html (and the old files were still on the server). Once I manually removed the old pages from the remote server and re-uploaded all files, all worked perfectly. So, I am a happy customer.

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Ah. Yes. the dreaded orphaned HTML files on the server issue. I wish there was a way to fix that. :cry:

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I WISH I knew about it, lol. I was going nuts trying to figure out what was going on. Plus Safari is pretty sticky with its caching too. Live and learn… (which is why I mentioned it).
cheers.

Well, I’ve now got my edit page for this site nailed down and what a pretty thing it is.
In some ways its better than the content its affecting!

Here are a couple of screenshots, the first is a bit of a monster as its about 20 screen heights tall!
https://infinit.io/_/35vcmDD
The page makes extensive use of BigWhiteDuck’s Pin, Sections and MagicGellan stacks to help navigate to the piece you want to edit.

Talking of help…I have a Foundation reveal lightbox containing a guide for the client: https://infinit.io/_/MShCT9d

This is serious overkill as edit pages go but once I started I couldn’t stop :slight_smile:

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Hmm, what about “bundling” Easy CMS with the Protect stack from Total CMS instead of bundling it with the Page Safe stack? Would make more sense to me, but maybe that’s technically not possible since the Protect stack may “rely” on too many things provided only by Total CMS (Admin Core stack) …

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I couldn’t get things to work until I changed the site setting for website to use https instead of http. My site auto-redirects http to https, and “davegillam.com” to “www.davegillam.com” but the eCMS URL checking failed until I set it to “https://www.davegillam.com”. The other thing I had to do was to add an “.htaccess” file to the root of where I’m publishing this new CMS type site. I needed to tell the system that index pages include “index.php” as well as “index.html”.

Once I figured those things out, it works well! I’m specifically getting this to get a new website client who is tired of her Joomla website being broken into and getting malware installed on it. She also complained that the Joomla site was too difficult for her to self-update her website content. With eCMS, updating should be easy-peasey. I also notice that her Joomla site is really slow to load, while the new eCMS stie is lightning quick.

Joe produces some stunning products and he’s got every right to charge what he wants. On the whole, I think his pricing is fair. Whilst I’d love to use Total CMS, it won’t make economic sense as most of my web sites are either personal ones for friends or for small local charities - no income to justify the cost of Total CMS. Easy CMS should work fine for me.

The interesting question for me is how Joe’s up coming blog stack works with his two CMS. I really hope it works with Easy CMS and not just with Total CMS.

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@davehughes The blog is not a separate product. It will be a part of Total CMS.

Shame - being able to manage personal blogs via Easy CMS would have been great.

Back to the drawing board for me!

@davehughes Once you start using CMS with other stacks it soon becomes apparent that quite a bit of the functionality offered in Total CMS can still be achieved using other Stacks, and to be fair Joe does suggest you use other 3rd Party stacks in his videos. So far I’ve used Easy CMS in the Doobox Owl Slider, Coscultures Image Gallery and using the ‘Embed’ code from Youtube have used a Text Edit stack to display a video on another page. Naturally I would like a blog page included, but as I’ve got Armadillo which is great for blogs I’m not likely to want Total CMS unless I get a paid customer. I’ve used other CMS offerings but have to say this is pretty marvellous in its simplicity and is great for non-techies not wanting to bother with SQL Databases. I have a problem with other solutions getting CMS working in sub-domains on some servers, but Easy CMS just works on all my main domains & sub-domains regardless of host servers. Whilst Joe does show you in a video what goes on below the surface on a host, but you don’t need to know any of this to be successful. I shall still use other solutions (mainly because I’ve purchased them), and particular Armadillo for user blog pages, but I cannot praise this product more - its really great and whilst I’m not trying to do Joe out of any revenue suggest highly that starting with Easy CMS and exploring its use with other stacks first is the way to go.

PS. Fortunately I also own Joe’s Page Safe stack (which is very reasonably priced), it would have been good if this stack had been included in both CMS offerings, because protecting your CMS Admin page is pretty essential. As it stands anyone can chuck content into your site.

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@davehughes See my post above about exploiting Easy CMS with other stacks. There are some goodies in Total CMS that I would like, but as I can achieve at least 50% of the Total CMS options with other stacks, it’s turning out to be great value for money.

I agree heartily. While I wish Page Safe was included, and I always get worried about the RW community’s propensity to whine about how expensive things are (and we are usually talking about increments of $10 or $20). We are lucky enough to usually have multiple solutions at varying price points, and the end RW user is free to choose one or none of them. Expecting developers to always give something away for nothing doesn’t help them pay to keep a roof over their head either. If you want something for free, maybe folks should check out Weebly (but even that can charge you $144 per year). Sometimes you get what you pay for (or don’t), but you are always free not to buy what the developers are offering. cheers…

@joeworkman Appreciate it’s a commercial decision to exclude Page Safe (thank goodness I’ve already got it) from Easy CMS, but some password control is pretty essential in any CMS solution. I have other CMS, all of which include a login. It’s your call of course, but I think you should advise users to purchase Page Safe in your videos.

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@Marten_Claridge Like your 'Horses For Courses" comment. This can be applied to lots of stacks which don’t do everything (I want) and the functionality is split over several stacks. I agree that Armadillo is a hard act to follow, particular as a Blog Page offering. It does have problems however, with some hosts. For example, GoDaddy just will just not support the ‘Solo’ option in Version 2 on sub-domains (although Version 1.7.5 works perfectly) - at least I can’t manage it. Now, Joe’s offering is pretty marvelous (especially for non-technies) and I’ve got effectively ‘Solo’ options working on many pages from a single Admin Page. I’m still experimenting with it’s use in several other (non-Joe Stacks) with great success. So - I’ve managed to get Easy CMS at least half-way to an Enterprise offering.

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