I have an Insurance site and I am thinking of switching over to a Content Management System. The site has 270 .html pages. I have been adding about ten pages of content or so a week. I am also wanting to start an RSS feed and from what I am reading I need to use a CMS to do it properly. I also want to be able to keep my same .html pages due to PR value. How difficult for a novice will this be to implement? Time frame for such a project? Hubert
You can get the site up and running in hours if it's just content that you have to put up. Then cutting across the 270 articles will take some time, allow 5 minutes for each - and ensure that you give them their original dates. Styling the site to your template and everything else will take more time, depending on your skills, requirements etc. I'd recommend Mambo as a great content management system with RSS out of the box. It may be unrealistic to expect a system to retain your old page names however. It's also a short term problem as Google will reward you for your new site! Sarah
I was told last night that I didn't need CMS to do RSS (which was why I wanted it in the first place.) I add 5 to 10 articles a week to my site. Should I just add the articles into my newly created RSS file as I do them? Or would it be better to just leave the site alone now, start a subdomain or a file folder and use CMS from then on and only link to the articles from my RSS file?
With the amount of content you're adding, using a page generating cms system would be your best bet. It will make it much easier to to maintain your site as well as make changes system wide whenever you want. It's kind of a hybrid. It uses a database to store the content, but generates actual web pages on the server from the database, using a template. Long term, this would probably be your best solution.
My other concern is my PR, would I be able to implement this and keep my pages named the same. I don't want to lose all my PR and end up with a URL names with a bunch of #'s.
This is a mambo site using sef404. Took me 5 minutes to add sef404. Took me about 30 minutes to set the site up. Much longer to add all the feeds I display but that's the "content" part where the effort should be directed.
Dont worry about your PR. The homepage will hold its PR and on the next update the pages will see theirs. Its only a visible thing anyway.
k I have everything downloaded. Is there a tutorial on installing Mambo? I know there has to be one somewhere I just can't seem to find it. Also, I have never build a page template before, is this any different from building a standard page?
Ok I have everything downloaded. Is there a tutorial on installing Mambo? I know there has to be one somewhere I just can't seem to find it. Also, I have never build a page template before, is this any different from building a standard page?
There will be somewhere. but it's as easy as pie just upload the files with their directory structure intact and go to the page you will get the install screen. it'll probably ask you to make some folders writeable and you do that using your ftp tool. Keep hitting f5 until you're happy. then click on next and follow the instructions. You do have a database, don't you? Sarah
There is a databese icon on the screen after I log in. I am using iPowerweb if you've ever heard of them
I am going to install the same CMS ! Do you have any results? Did you manage to get everything done? Anything to tell a newbie ? I would like to see a URL of your page if it's ok... Thanks!