recently i got a customer who had a very simple site with 4 or so static pages. he wanted me to add an option to easily add and update content, like news or similiar. Now, to my emberrasment i wrote him that it would be way better just to convert his whole site to a neat CMS (i use drupal)...and then he could add as much dynamic content as he wants. I told him that right off my head i would NOT know how to add something QUICK to his site which provides an easy way to add/manage dynamic content. I also told him that in the same time i could convert his whole site to drupal. Did i say the right thing ? Or would there actually be a simple way to provide something like he wanted to an existing site which i could've done in a matter of minutes (if he just wants something very simple, without a database etc.) just to occasionally edit/update a sites content with a built-in editor ?
With a database would almost certainly be quicker than non-database. We have a custom very basic solution for our clients who simply want to be able to edit the copy/ images on the pages but not edit the template or add/ remove pages that only takes less than an hour to install.
I guess you should look for good online WYSIWYG editor rather than full blown CMS in this case. Some of them allow you to specify areas on the webpage that can be edited. And it is basically a single script that shows some parts of html in a fancy textarea and makes them available for editing. Alternatively you can try to teach him how to use normal HTML editor, for example nvu.
Snippetmaster (snippetmaster.com) is the first one that comes up to my mind. Is not open source, but it has a free Lite version. I guess you can find wysiwyg online editors on hotscripts.com built around the same idea.