Setting up a website

CMS is just a 'content management system'.

Essentially it provide lots of customisable templates that get their content from a database.

Your create pages by putting various elements (banners, articles, blog entries, categories) where you want them.

Example:

I have a website template with headers etc.

I have a category 'model engineering'

If I create an article on model engineering subject, I assign it to that category.

I decorate the article with images from a 'media library' that i have uploaded.

If I go to the 'model engineering' category they category-specific information appears and it also lists as many of the articles as I want, a few as short excerpts and more as short links, automatically generated.

Click on one of the article excerpts and it then loads the full articles inside the overall template. The article includes a link-back to the categories.

I can also have a page of categories.

I can freely link to pages as well as using this automated system

There are other types of content - banners, ads etc. as well

Everything has sensible defaults.

This makes creating a usable website as simple as populating and basic page template, then adding categories and adding articles. If you don't change the templates this is as simple as typing in text, adding links and uploading images.

Everything appears neat and tidy automatically in the templates and re-organises to fit screen size (even adapting to phones).

If I change a template or style, it automatically 'rolls out' through the whole website, so a major style change only needs to be done once.

If I wanted other people to contribute, I can set permissions so they can add articles but not edit categories or change templates, for example.

This is how a CMS works, it make it very easy to have a consistent feel through your website but also allows a huge number of editors to add content without 'breaking' the design of a website.

Neil

Web-sites are like machine tools: you can get anything between a Seig C0 and a factory full of automatics and robots. So, step one, as always in Engineering, is to specify your requirement. Don't expect to run the equivalent of ebay on Weebly! Don't buy a Data Centre and CMS to publish Parish Council News.

Things to think about:

• How many concurrent users do you expect?
• How much bandwidth do you think will be consumed? (Videos are much more expensive than plain text.)
• How much data will the site host?
• Do you expect the website to grow and if so by how much? (Can be expensive!)
• Do you want to run a shop or otherwise take money? (Complicated, fraud protection, etc.)
• Do you just want to serve documents and pictures, or do something more complicated involving a database, form filling, collecting personal detail or active content etc.
• How much does it matter if your website gets hacked?
• How much time and effort do you personally want to put in.

Some examples:

• My ISP provides a simple free web-hosting service. It cannot support more than about 10 concurrent users, is limited to 512Mb of data, and there are no tools or server-side scripting. To use it I have to write HTML and manually publish it; there is no technical support and backup/recovery is my problem. It's useful if you are technically savvy with a small user base interested in simple information. Otherwise, it's very basic and hard work.
• My ISP also provides a range of more heavy duty facilities. These come as packages, adding stuff like more data storage, tools, scripting, bandwidth, security, support and other services. The basic package is suitable for something like a club, at the high-end small businesses are catered for. None of these options are particularly cheap but publishing and maintaining the website is much easier; they do most of the work.
• There are a several 'free' hosting options like Weebly. Typically these come with a tool to simplify building more-or-less sophisticated web-sites, will support a decent number of users, and a reasonable amount of data. Like my ISP, there may be a range of packages on offer. Their business models vary, but hooking customers often features. Sometimes they insert advertising into your content; another method is to start cheap and then increase the cost later. (If you invest a lot of time and money in the content, and have many people using a successful website, it can be very painful to move. This is particularly true if their 'free' publishing software is proprietary. ) Another model relies on the web owner needing to grow. Charges apply when more storage or bandwidth or facilities are wanted. Don't be too put off by these comments; choose the right option in the first place and prices are competitive. Just have a think about how you expect your website to evolve (or not!) and read the small print. Don't be the man who buys a knackered secondhand Seig C0 when he really needs a Hardinge, and only eventually gets there by upgrading via a mini-lathe, Super 7, and BH600.
• If you have a moderate requirement (hundreds of users, Gigabytes of data, Content Management etc.), then usually better to go straight to a straightforward paid service. These are more likely than their free brethren to be unencumbered with complications like advertising and costly expansion deals.  It will be necessary to read small print.
• Hosting at home is generally unattractive unless you already have the necessary skills, time and inclination to do the work.  Quite expensive too.
• If your requirement is high-end the best way forward is to send for the professionals. If you don't already have an IT Department, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM and many others offer the necessary consultancy. Be prepared to pay big bucks!

Dave

Edited By SillyOldDuffer on 06/11/2017 11:08:33

Thanks for the clear explanation of CMS Neil. Realistically, I suppose I need something like that - no point in re-inventing wheels. It does worry me though that I'm writing this in Firefox which is apparently occupying 1.2 GB of RAM - must be a lot of redundant code sitting there doing nothing. But I guess memory/cpu time is cheap now.

Dave - thanks for taking the time to write your detailed reply. I was recently tempted to respond to a question in another place from someone who wanted to buy a first mill - should he go horizontal or a vertical? I didn't post, but if I had I would have asked what he wanted to do with the machine. I suspect his ideas would have been hazy. Often people don't have a clear plan of precisely where they're going when they start something new. Certainly the case for me when I bought my first lathe. I guess one needs to find a jumping-in point which won't lead to disaster or discouragement, learn, and buy a better suiting lathe - oops, I mean web hosting package. Or guitar. Or whatever. There's enough real-life experience in the replies on this thread to enable me to make a relatively safe jump into the unknown I think.

Having said that I confidently expect around 1 million (+/- 1e6) hits daily, so possibly I should buy a Hardinge - er I mean a Cray to meet the anticipated demand...

Thanks again for advice, Robin.