New to CMS

[NoDice]

Hi!

I am a Swede in the process of designing two sites for my company, and I have some grasp of HTML, CSS and Javascript (that I am currently updating since I have not made a site in years).

The important part for us as I set out on this project is design and cross platform functionality, so my initial inclination was to just make a site using these basic tools.

Of course, as soon as you start thinking of making two sites using the same basic custom design-templates, and also ponder the fact that it would be good if your colleagues could easily make changes additions to sites; you realize content management with some more server side database functionality probably is the way to go from the start.  

Having researched what product would provide the best tools for someone with a design focus (I really just want to think about how to achieve what I want using HTML/CSS and its new capabilities instead of flash that I used last time around), I landed here.

My questions before I decide which way to go (true CMS or not) are the following:

•    How much extra work/time will I have to put in, as far as understanding and writing php and getting the hang of the PW system, just to be able to create the same responsive designs I would make in HTML/CSS/Javascrip, while also achieving the easiest type of content editing capabilities (in line with what you can get with a CushyCMS type product)?  

That would be my goal initially, and the upside for me - apart from basic editing that I could get using simpler tools - would be that I could then add more advanced features and CMS functionality down the line if I am already in the right structure.

•    Is it always possible to “fall back” to regular HTML and CSS for sections that you give up on having management features for? That is, will it be possible to use regular code within this framework if you are willing to forgo the CMS functionality on some pages?

I hope that question makes sense, but what I am really asking is if I will be able to fallback to and use any and all designs and functionality that I can achieve with html/css/javascript if I fail to achieve what I want within the PW framework.

Hanging around this site and the forums here, I feel like PW is certainly the way to go; but as always, it is a question of whether or not I have the extra time and effort to invest now to get the results I want, and for me, it is very hard to figure out how big that investment would be if I am not after very advanced CMS functionality at this stage.
 

Thanks in advance for any input you may have on this!

[MarcC]

Yeah, just don't put any PHP in your templates, I guess. But you need to keep in mind that typically many pages will share one template--that's a big advantage because you aren't repeating your work. Now if you want to back away from such dynamic usage in favor of plain HTML/CSS/JS, you may need to assign a separate template for each page on your site. If your site has a lot of different pages, that's sort of annoying--you'll want to take advantage of the dynamic PHP stuff as soon as you can.

At the very least I would encourage you to work with the default templates that come with your first PW install, watch how they use includes, and try to see if you can combine the include statements with e.g. echo $page->title and echo $page->body to get something simple and dynamic up and running.

[teppo]

First of all: welcome to the forum, @NoDice!

•    How much extra work/time will I have to put in, as far as understanding and writing php and getting the hang of the PW system, just to be able to create the same responsive designs I would make in HTML/CSS/Javascrip, while also achieving the easiest type of content editing capabilities (in line with what you can get with a CushyCMS type product)?

Not that much really, though it naturally depends on your past experience and so on. With CushyCMS (as far as I can tell from a quick look at their video guide) you'll have to learn how their system works, insert special attributes within your HTML markup and stuff like that. With PW you'll be learning how to insert basic PHP tags within your markup -- not that big a difference.

Before you install PW and dive into it's default templates, I'd suggest that you read the basics of working with PW from our docs. ProcessWire is a very simple system to learn: all you really need to understand in order to get started are the basic concepts of pages, templates and fields (and a little bit about querying them and their values with the API.)

As an example, you could have a template called basic-page with fields "title" and "body". By default that template would use basic-page.php in /site/templates/ as it's template file. To print out whatever values those fields have you could do this in said template file:
 

<h1><?php echo $page->title; ?></h1>

<p>This is static content, not coming from any page field. This will appear on <strong>each page using "basic-page" template</strong> as-is.</p>

<?php echo $page->body; ?>

Doesn't look too complicated, now does it?

Of course you will pretty soon need a few other tricks, such as using foreach to iterate through things like image field containing multiple images, but that's all described in the docs and it's also dead simple.

•    Is it always possible to “fall back” to regular HTML and CSS for sections that you give up on having management features for? That is, will it be possible to use regular code within this framework if you are willing to forgo the CMS functionality on some pages?

As @MarcC pointed out, it's possible but since multiple pages typically share one template you'd be affecting all of those pages. Then again, if you have a special page for something specific (such as "contact us") you can always create a new template (and a new template file) for that page.. OR you could do something like this in any of your template file:
 

<?php if ($page->url == "/contact-us/") { ?>

<h3>Our office is located here:</h3>
<iframe width="425" height="350" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" src="https://maps.google.com/maps?q=disneyland,+paris&output=embed"></iframe>

<?php } ?>

With ProcessWire your options are almost limitless. Don't worry, it'll all fall in place once you start playing with it
 

But you need to keep in mind that typically many pages will share one template--that's a big advantage because you aren't repeating your work. Now if you want to back away from such dynamic usage in favor of plain HTML/CSS/JS, you may need to assign a separate template for each page on your site. If your site has a lot of different pages, that's sort of annoying--you'll want to take advantage of the dynamic PHP stuff as soon as you can.

It's a bit ugly and not something I'd recommend, but: you can also have a field (or a couple of fields) in your templates (all of them or just some) that spit out raw HTML, CSS, JS etc.

I say it's "ugly" because it could easily lead to various problems, such as broken page structure and so on, and I certainly would like to avoid such a thing on a client-managed website -- but as long as the site is managed only by you and a few other all of whom know enough to be careful not to break anything and not to insert any dangerous, external scripts etc. it's feasible option.

Edit: just wanted to point out that essentially you're wondering whether to use an easy-to-use yet full-blown CMS with almost infinite possibilities (PW) or something that's designed to be "an easy way to change content" (CushyCMS.)

Think about it this way: getting used to PW will take more than those "few minutes" CushyCMS promises, but once you do learn how to use it there's absolutely no limit to what you can do with it. On the other hand, if you're a) certain that your needs will stay small and b) really prefer a hosted, service-free tool then you should definitely go with CushyCMS. All in all it depends on your needs and preferences

Edited June 29, 2013 by teppo

[pwired]

Think about pw as: once your mind has embraced a higher dimension, it will never want to go back again.

PW destroys the paradigm cms because you can structurize, combine, templating and profiling your html/css/js

in any way you want and hook it all up with a very powerful api - so - you will always have more freedom and win time with pw.

PW is fast on the front-end and back-end, lots of modules and easy editable for clients, 4 very important issues.

Yes - for someone with a design focus like you - you need to invest some time to get familiar with pw and it's api but it will pay off.

People with a coders mind will have a very short pw learning curve.

Here my must read pw starters link collection:

http://processwire.com/talk/topic/1041-raydale-multimedia-a-case-study/

http://processwire.com/talk/topic/1015-switching-from-drupal-to-processwire/page__view__findpost__p__8988

http://processwire.com/talk/topic/3691-tutorial-a-quick-guide-to-processwire-for-those-transitioning-from-modx/

http://processwire.com/talk/topic/2296-confused-by-pages/

I found this also somewhere (it isn't mine) but can't remember where I found it.

Well I think most people think page == what you see instead of page == container
Well, you gotta understand the power behind pages. At first I didn't get it either - because
I only saw pages as, well, normal pages, just like in other systems. Not as a content container
which can be called via the PW API. So yeah - once you got it, you got it. But it takes a while,
I think. Especially when you look at and test many CMSs for just a short time.
So I think this power feature/USP got to be explained again and again - to attract new developers...

And here some good Stuff to read about pw

http://www.mademyday.de/why-i-chose-processwire-over-modx.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ProcessWire

http://getsymphony.com/discuss/thread/79645/

[DaveP]

One of the things to add to the excellent answers above is that a lot of what you will learn with PW is standard PHP, so it is a transferrable skill - not like a bespoke templating language that only works with one CMS, but a skill you could use in other circumstances.

[NoDice]

Well, after those thoughtful replies, I guess I’ll just have to jump in! 

And I do understand and see all the upside; what is perhaps a little bit unusual in my case, is that I will probably only be making these two sites, and that there will be no clients. 

I am making them for my company, and I could be doing all the editing myself. Also, I am not a graphical designer, web designer, coder, photographer, moviemaker, copywriter etc. Yet I will be doing everything on these sites myself, so it will be a massive undertaking for me anyway. 

So, what I really wanted to make sure of before even starting, was that I would not be prevented from using, say new “CSS3” transitions or such, since the CMS-framework might not support or work with some HTML, JavaScript or CSS-features. That I would not realize down the road that the decision to go with PW would mean I simply could not do something that I otherwise could have, if you will. 

Thank so much for taking the time to give such great replies – now, wish me luck, I will need it!  

[DaveP]

So, what I really wanted to make sure of before even starting, was that I would not be prevented from using, say new “CSS3” transitions or such, since the CMS-framework might not support or work with some HTML, JavaScript or CSS-features. That I would not realize down the road that the decision to go with PW would mean I simply could not do something that I otherwise could have, if you will. 

PW puts no limits on your front-end design. Your resulting web site could be completely unstyled html, all laid out in tables   or the latest cutting edge CSS3. That part is up to you. PW just organises your content and page hierarchy, if that is all you need from it.