- CMS Advice -

Hello

I am in marketing and have some wordpress experience. I would like to provide a website solution to a niche market. I am currently purchasing themes individually and tweaking them for the specific businesses but I want to take this to the next level

I believe means I need to host my own CMS. I am not sure if I have the vocabulary correct but what I want to provide is something simlar to

www.gospacecraft.com
and\or
www.coverboom.com

gospacecraft has the website creation solution I need (for my clients to create their own responsive website)

coverboom has the marketing options (e.g. for my clients to capture and maintain their own email newsletter for their own clients … maybe this could be an option for them to choose and we can intergrate with something like mailchimp… ?)

I am not sure of all the requirments to accomplish what I am describing but I believe I would need to :

  • Host a CMS (somwhere like 1&1)
  • Automate the install of the solution (hopefully wordpress) with the customers options locked down to the basics they need to create their own site (e.g upload logo, add pages, content and images and the turn on marketing options) again branded as my company

again , I know my vocabulary is lacking but with the above examples Im hoping I can get advice from someone who has done this type of solution prior and can help me with understanding the requirements and considerations for this. gospacecraft.com is the most important example of what im looking to accomplish since they provide a solution for their clients to create their own liquid\responsive website.

I am hoping that i can purchase a fully licensed theme\cms solution and only require a developer to assist with the backend or hosting side of this (as I am on a budget)

Hope this makes sense and thank you in advance for any assitance\advice you cna provide

James

Hi James, my experience tells me that there is no such thing as a CMS that applies to every project. There is always some degree of customization required. Whatever is the solution you decide to go forward with, you need to take this into account. I would never decide to go for one specific product, and use it as part of my work process. CMS’s are just tools, and each project will present you with different challenges that will require different tools. Wordpress is perfect for most institutional type websites and blogs but it might not be perfect for retail, even-though there are modules that accommodate this.

well, your queries are pretty confusing to me. Are you looking for a CMS which can handle dynamic website? You could probably use Drupal, Joomla or Pixie which use MySQL. Wordpress on the other hand is a simple CMS which nOObs can use. One important think you need to make note of is that you will need a developer to customize your website. All of these are Open source CMS therefore you needn’t pay anything for using them.

I can see a couple of ways forward:

  1. Find a solution that you believe works AND that allows branding and reselling. Sign up and get going.
  2. Work out a way to provide a service yourself that limits what clients can do/expect to a limited set of options. You can build this yourself using a Wordpress install and a series of plugins to achieve the client access (branded for you) you are after. It won’t be as customer friendly or intuitive as this is usually the thing that the companies in (1) are addressing.

The dilemma in most of this is how much hand holding you need for your clients. I agree with Pedro that there’s very few one-size-fits all that don’t require modification/customisation. It also depends on how many clients you can handle. If you have a current client base that you will approach then it is something quite different to opening it up to the public. If it is the later you will immediate have to provide some benefit over and above the client going direct to the company providing your platform.