CMS Solutions w. Foundation: Armadillo? Dropkick? Other?

It’s been a few years now, and though there is still so much for me to learn with Rapidweaver, I’d like to think I’m getting pretty good with it and I get a lot of sidework because of it.

One request that crops up often from potential clients is CMS (mostly for blogs or testimonial pages) and it’s the one thing I’ve not yet wrapped my head around yet. In these cases I pass the work onto someone else. I know that Armadillo and Dropkick exist, and I’ve had a look at them, but I’ve yet to really get to grips with them because while I’m sure they’re excellent, I’m not sure if they’ll do the job.

I use Foundation almost exclusively now, so to design the page from scratch, but be able to allow a client to manage their own content would be amazing.

Would either Armadillo/Dropkick do the job? Does anybody have an experience with them?

I have the same question, mostly for clients that want to add photos to their portfolio or update their event schedules. The key for me would be simplicity as my clients are not at all comfortable with anything that remotely resembles code. I was hoping to find a drag and drop interface but have had no luck thus far.

If you are willing to wait just a few more weeks, I have a pretty awesome product coming out…

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For Blogs, Joe’s Tumblr stack would work. Allows you to blog from any computer, smart phone or tablet and even via email if you set it up right. Need to sign up at Tumblr.com

Zeebe
I do support for Joe Workman, so please check out his stacks and his GREAT Foundation Theme

Armadillo is pretty good for all this tasks. You have a full blog with rss feed, categories and much more. Further more solo content even can add pages before or after the standard menu navigation.

Solo content gives you the ability to place content on any place in the Rapidweaver website, which clients can change later online. You also can select which options should be available for your clients. If you only want to allow solo content, then you can disable the ability that clients can create new pages, which are added to the menu.

There exists two editors in Armadillo, once markdown, which my clients don’t like and an full featured editor like word, which my clients love. (Not the markdown editor is bad, but my clients don’t like markdown itself)

In the full featured editor of Armadillo you can drag an image from the desktop an put it right in the editor, and it automatically will be uploaded. When you create a link to an image, then it will be pop-up in a lightbox without doing anything additionally.

I use Armadillo with foundation, there is still a little bug, when adding pages to the foundation Topbar, but a new version in the next days should solve this. I already contacted the creator of Armadillo.

Dropkick CMS is not as powerful yet.
If you have any additional questions comparing these two cms, let me know, I have both.

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Does anyone have any experience using Stacks Cloud? It seems like it might be pretty simple to use for my non-tech savvy clients.

Hey Joe,

I can absolutely wait a few weeks. I am a huge fan of your stuff. Your stacks are like Pokemon. I’ve gotta catch 'em all!!

Thanks webplus. Sounds like Armadillo probably would do everything I need it to. But I’m in no rush at the moment, so maybe I’ll wait a few weeks and see what Joe has in store.

Thanks all.

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I can second what Webplus wrote. Armadillo’s latest upgrade is really polished. Its easy to set up and even easier to use.

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As @webplus and @Bioguy have noted, this is something Armadillo can handle quite well. I’m more than happy to help answer any specific questions about what you’re wanting to do, so feel free to get in touch: support@nimblehost.com

EDIT: We have a test site with Armadillo and Foundation here: http://test.nimblehost.com/armadillo-foundation/

Best,

Jonathan

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Just played around with Stacks Cloud. It is not updating on the site. I have two test stacks.
Using RW5 & Stacks 2 on this site. Anyone have this issue?
(really hating the lack of forum history!)

Nice looking forward to see a cms from you :wink: Is there also a blog included the cms or a maybe a media galerie? So far i like armadillo what wil be different and what will stand out.

Is Stacks Cloud dead?

There is this now! :wink:

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Downloading the 30 day demo this morning. I found Stacks Cloud easy to use, but the content was not showing up online (which was an issue). Can’t believe all the carping over price, your price point seems reasonable to me. I hope you make a ton of money, because I want more RW developers to not jump ship to WP or other platforms.

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I love Armadillo 2.0! The addition of Solo Content has been amazing! I’ve always wanted a CMS that had a blog as well as a stack that created editable content on Stacks pages…and now I have it with Armadillo!

Here’s a Foundation site with Armadillo: http://langleysaf.ca/
And here’s another Foundation site (it’s still in progress): http://tradingpostbrewing.com/draft/

I tried out Dropkick CMS…it’s beautiful and well-built, but it lacks a media upload function (e.g. for uploading PDF’s, etc.) and a blog.

Kuler Edits is super easy to install and use, but it lacks a blog. It’s good for super simple websites that only need minor updating (like store hours, etc.). One downside is that I’ve had a couple of instances where my clients have said their content has randomly disappeared.

@joeworkman, Total CMS looks great, but what makes it better than Armadillo?

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As I have said before, Armadillo is a great product and differs from my CMS. Its great that we have both as options. Since I don’t know too much about Armadillo, it would be better is users commented on what they feel are the positives of each. I have asked a few users that I know use both to chime in here.

Armadillo has a very powerful and flexible blog system. There’s a lot of things you can do with it (from a structural point of view).

Solo content in Armadillo is super easy to set up and use. TotalCMS obviously has more options. (There are also large price differentials between the two.)

Besides Armadillo’s robust blogging capability (soon to offer multiple blog capability) is how it handles multiple users. For me personally this is the killer feature. I’m currently running a course website and all students can contribute to the blog, and are responsible for their own solo content areas. I probably have about 120 solo content areas on the site, plus the blog. Having my students navigating through 120 solo content areas would be a disaster. What Armadillo does very nicely is when a user signs on they see only the “stuff” they are responsible for. And they can see all those solo content areas in one admin panel: so easy to make multiple edits in one session. So each student only sees a limited menu of options of things they can change. For any website that might have multiple contributors this is a crucial feature.

Based on price, Armadillo should really be compared to EasyCMS.

I’m sure there are other things I’m forgetting. I think it’s great that Armadillo, TotalCMS, and EasyCMS products exist: they provide a powerful much needed toolset for RW users.

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@Mathew

Great post!
Thank you for providing this. I’ve tried a few of the available CMS systems and what you provided there will inform where I go next, I think.

I really like Dropkick CMS but it has certain limitations that are starting to annoy me. Namely:-

a) All content blocks are listed in one big long list with no possibility of listing content blocks by page or anything else.
b) Other systems - namely Armadillo and now Joe’s offerings - permit ‘on page’ selection and editing, which is really what the clients like.
c) No centralised media store is a real pain.

I’ve also used FlatCMS from CodeCanyon on RW sites and it’s also very nice but suffers from the same a) and b) issues as Dropkick.

I think TotalCMS may be ideal (it DOES look sensational) - but there is no way I’m buying into a $99 per domain model for anything in RW, that simply doesn’t work for me at all. If the client is happy to pay that much extra for the CMS then I’ll use Statamic every single time - it’s also $99 per site, but there the similarities end.

The way you described different content areas being editable by only the content ‘owner’ is just brilliant… Yep, I think you have just helped me to see a way forward here… :slight_smile:

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Another somewhat significant difference between Armadillo and the Workman CMS is that Armadillo requires MySQL databases for each usage. I don’t mind, because setting up a database is trivial for me, but maybe not for others, so its pretty interesting they found a way around that.

My question is: does the Workman CMS utilize the Workman servers in any way? I had wondered this aloud in a different thread about this, because the first ‘per domain’ pricing scheme I remember seeing for RW was Stacks Cloud. I’m going off memory, but I believe that product requires constant communication with the YourHead servers. Therefore, I can understand the tiered pricing because each site creates an overhead in bandwidth and maintenance.

I can only imagine the amount of work and testing that went on behind the scenes of this fascinating new collection of CMS stacks, and developers should feel free to charge whatever they think their product is worth. I just don’t understand the per site pricing (seems to be the only beef so far with the announcement of this product)… Meaning, if its not creating overhead for the company, why is it different than a similarly large project, and collection of stacks? (Foundation, for example)

@kryten Yes, I love the capabilities built into TotalCMS. It fills a real need. I’m not a web designer by “job” simply by “hobby”. I’ve heard many good things about Statamic, but have never used myself. Nor do I need to use it for customers. :smile:

There is one future project (about a year from now) where using TotalCMS would be the best solution. I will take the plunge when I need to. I’m certainly glad it’s around!

Armadillo fulfills my immediate needs beautifully. I did not mention that someone will see all the posts, or all the content areas: anyone who is given the “administrator” role. While my students would freak out at seeing 120 different content areas (which they don’t have to worry about), Jonathan has made life easy for me (the admin) by providing both (1) an intuitive way to name solo content areas (some products do the naming for you) and (2) great/easy search capabilities. This means I can always find any of my 120 solo content areas in less than 7 seconds (probably much less). He also provides sorting by various columns (publish date, edit date, name, and more) which may be more beneficial for some.

Overall I think products like Armadillo and TotalCMS are going a long ways towards “saving” RapidWeaver. There’s such a big need for CMS solutions: if RW doesn’t provide those solutions more people will look elsewhere. I hope DropKick continues to develop as well. This is an area where competition will be really really good for both customers and RealMac.

Stacks was the first truly big leap forwards, the new CMS tools represent to me the next big leap forwards. Happy days.