Client asked me to show him how to make minor updates

[snillor]

A new client just accepted my estimate for minor work on his modest website (nothing major: he wants to keep the look and colors he has: I’ll be making it standards-compliant, replacing tables with CSS layouts, drop keyword stuffing, make it a flexible design to accommodate browser windows larger than 800 px, fix some navigation issues, and make all text more readable.

But he just asked me to “Show [him] how to upload changes, so that when I re-price or make some other change I can go online and implement at any time.”

I’m not sure how to answer him. He’s not experienced so I don’t see him doing any hand-coding. If anything, he probably plans to use some WYSIWYG editor to make changes, and I don’t even know if he knows how to do this. I understand that he can’t spend much on updates (his is a one-man business and controlling costs is vital). But I don’t want him going in and messing everything up (even knowing that if this happens, he’ll probably have to pay me to fix things).

I considered offering him one free hour a month for me to do minor updates. But this is a bad precedent to make – if I had 100 clients each getting one free hour a month, that obviously won’t work.

So I’m open to suggestions. How do you handle situations like this?

Thanks

[yoboubdir]

You can take a look at this post https://css-tricks.com/the-light-cms-trend/, i hope you find what are you looking for.

[snillor]

Thanks yoboudir.

Several of these apps look like good a solution to the situation. I’ll definitely investigate these.

It looks like most of these apps use classes to identify which specific bits of text content I want to be editable. That’s all good. But it occurs to me that it would be easier to implement this from square one on a fresh design rather than add it to a site that already uses classes extensively. (Aren’t there issues with some browsers having problems with multiple classes on the same element?) Luckily, my client’s site doesn’t [yet] use CSS, so I won’t have to worry about conflicting or multiple class names.

[ozee]

I have not ran into any problems that cause a browser to act strange when I have more than one class on an element. I use multiple classes a lot to add different effects to elements on the page, the only browser that does not fully support this would be IE6 and below. IE6 supports the use of multiple class names on an element (there are many bugs with it though), I.E.

However, it does not support using multiple classes in the selector, I.E.

.nav .main {
whatever: whatever;
}

The reference that I used was http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/10/14/css-differences-in-internet-explorer-6-7-and-8/ and if you want to know more about what IE does and does not support you can visit http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc351024(VS.85).aspx

[snillor]

Thanks ozee and virtual.

ozee, I don’t support IE6, and I tell clients that. I couldn’t remember exactly what and where I read about multiple classes not being supported, but if IE6 is the only browser that can’t handle them, no problem.

virtual, you described exactly what I want to accomplish. I don’t mind if he edits a few things here and there, just don’t want him changing the structure, or thinking he can add new pages.

[shick11sp]

As nice as Surreal and Cushy are, when I had a client who needed a super simple cms solution, I wanted something I could host myself, and that was completely free for more than 2 or 3 clients. I did a lot of searching, and one of my favorites I found is NC-CMS. It’s simple to implement, and doesn’t require the use of multiple classes. It also gives you the option to store the data in a database or a flat file system. The other nice thing is, there are relatively few users, so the developer is quite helpful in his forum for any issues that may arise.

let me know what you think

[snillor]

shick11sp,

Thanks for the lead. It sounds closer to what I’m looking for.

I’ve narrowed it down to CushyCMS, PageLime, SurrealCMS, and now NC-CMS and will compare the advantages and disadvantages of these.

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