Ok I have come to the realization that I need to be able to edit on the go when I am not at my mac at home.
I don’t have foundation so I am looking for something that will allow me to use stacks and edit on the go.
I am looking at Total CMS and Armadillo what is the best to do what I am wanting?
my website is www.fresnoflyfishers.org incase you wanted to see what I am wanting to do. I am wanting to possibly make changes to the main page primarily outings and upcoming meetings. What would you guys suggest?
I would have thought that EasyCMS would be a better fit and it’s a lot cheaper than Total CMS. Armadillo’s more for blogging (though it does handle what it calls ‘solo content’.
One consideration is whether you’re going to use it on more than one site. If so, Armadillo will work out much cheaper as you don’t pay for a licence for each site (although there was talk of changing this some years ago). Armadillo and Joe Workman’s two offerings are great products and there are many other RW CMS solutions out there. Although Armadillo started out as a blogging tool, it handles other sorts of content very well, too.
Add a protect stack to the page, this will lock it from eyes you don’t want to see it. If you want it out of the navigation, then turn that off in the page inspector.
Yes, you can name it whatever you want. But you would have a password protected admin area.
I usually set up a main admin page and use tabs for each page on the site and put that pages changeable content there. If it’s a small site you may not need to do that. For large sites I make the admin mimic the page navigation of the public site.
I am not sure if I am relaying my question correctly. I see that they have a free demo for total CMS, I will give that a shot and see how it works for me. Thanks guys and @zeebe@joeworkman for all your help
Gary, it may seem confusing at first but it’s really quite simple.
It’s much harder to explain than it is to do.
in summary, you make a page or pages in a password protected area.
For every header, paragraph, image etc. that you want to make changable you include it in this area.
And on the public page, you assign that item a cmsID
Example:
Public Page - Home page Header stack (H1 header area)you assign a cmsID of Home-Headline
Admin Page - Home page section | Headline element | you have the same cmsID (Home-Headline)
So when you go to admin and change the content of Home-Headline and save, when the public page loads it will replace the H1 Header with the contents of cmsID Home-Headline.
Without hesitation, I’d buy either Easy CMS or Total CMS (or any other product from Joe), just because they came from him. I’m a busy person, and I don’t have time to waste on cryptic instructions. I also don’t have endless hours to spend trying to figure out how to get a stack to work as advertised. Joe’s instructions are clear, the products are great and the support is top notch.
I went to download the free Total CMS Trial and it is telling me I am missing foundation. Is this correct that I have to have foundation for this to work?
Yup! With my Admin pages, I uncheck the box in RW in the Inspector’s General Settings for the page that says “Show in navigation” so that page doesn’t appear in the menus.
I also don’t call the page or the folder that it’s in “Admin.” That way, it’s much less likely that someone will even know about or even find the Admin page. Only the person running the site gets the URL of the Admin page. I know it’s not bullet-proof security by itself, but it makes a hacker’s job more difficult.
For real security, both Easy and Total CMS come with a stack called “Protect” that sets up password protection for you. You just add it to the Admin page, add graphics if you want, set the password, and you’re good to go.
By the way, I don’t think that you need Foundation to run either CMS, but I had Foundation installed when I bought TotalCMS. There’s also a checkbox someplace in Total CMS that allows you to say, in effect, “No, I’m not using Foundation.” I just don’t remember where that is. Joe’s the authority on this. It’s been a long day, and at this point, my memory is just a memory.
No, you do not need Foundation for Total CMS. The demo project file is made with Foundation. I believe I have a version of it made with the Reason stack that comes with RW 6 and RW 7, but I can not find it, searching all of my computers for it though. If not, I will convert it for you.
I found the tutorials on YouTube and am a bit confused. If I already have an existing file that I want to add CMS to, Do I just copy every page and then add a CMS Admin at the top of the copied page? The video’s show how to do it from scratch, however i only see one page and there isn’t multiple pages being done for someone like myself who will have to do that.
It would be nice if you could upload a few pages to the WWW and we can see how we are supposed to work the CMS. Will all my stacks that I currently use such as alert bar, stacks 3, waterfall, all of my stacks4stacks etc work. Or am I just stuck with what comes packaged in the CMS for text pictures etc?
Sorry for the many questions I am just a bit confused. I get how we tie the admin page to the home page, however when dealing with multiple pages I am a bit confused on how to do that.
I don’t have foundation and since a lot of what is shown is being used on a foundation theme I noticed you referred to foundation a lot. So I am trying to understand how this would work with a non foundation theme and with multiple pages, and then integrate it into what I have already.
