Starting a Rebuild...

[kcrox]

Hey all,
Our church got connected with ACS Extend, and although we absolutely LOVE the functionality of inputting articles, media, etcetera, we cannot continue with our design, or the lack of customer service that has been received.

So, we've decided to split from ACS, now, I'm kind of looking around, trying to figure out our next move. We would prefer if we had the functionality of ACS, but also the ability to change our design when we please.

With the design, however, it starts to get kinda iffy. We all agreed upon one design, which has a home page design, and then all of our other pages have a separate design, and they look not drastically different, but we think the home page needs to be set apart from the other pages.

So here's my question: Have you found such a program that functions like Extend, but allows us to have such a design?

[[Admin] osborn4]

The most popular content management servers are Drupal, Joomla and Wordpress. All three have thier affectionados.

But that would be the direction I would head. I'd start by researching those.

[Ramah]

Hey Kcrox, your options will depend on the technical ability of your IT staff. Like osborne mentioned, Joomla is great and you can input articles as well as change the design and graphics. However, it is not point-and-click. You will need to know PHP/HTML to change your design.
Before you go too far with your plans, let one of your members who is a graphic artist advise you on what the layout should be. Because for you to mention that you want every single page to have a different layout sounds like chaos. Post a link of what your current website is and then I can better point you in the right direction. Before I even look, I can pretty much tell you that you will NOT one to use a company like ACS because if you want to leave, you cant take your website with you. You have to start all over. (like now)

Ramah

[kcrox]

Ramah,
Our IT staff consists of our Network Admin, our Publicity staff member(who is quite handy with HTML/CSS/PhP), and myself, the graphic and web designer

redeemer.net
Now, before you look, please be aware that this is what ACS designed FOR us, and has no direct reflection on my abilities as a designer. I have already held a meeting in which we specifically addressed the layout of the new website, as well as other functions.

To clear up the "every page have a different layout" idea, it's more like we want the home page to look a certain way, and then the rest of the pages have one specific layout, rather than every single page have a different layout, which quite honestly increases my heart rate just thinking about it(and not positively.)

I've been more seriously looking into Joomla, specifically because I feel that would be the easiest for our staff to add their items to, and as well allow for a little more flexibility in design. My only problems with Joomla is that I can see the staff members becoming confused by the hierarchy of article placement.

What do y'all use?

[Ramah]

We initially used joomla and wordpress. While they are great systems, they werent a good fit for us. So we switched to using Dreamweaver, which you must be technical use.
Here is our current site:
newpsalmist.org/
and here is a redesign that we are testing to launch in a week or so
aqstudios.com/npbc/

Staying on top of the security vulnerabilities present in a CMS was just something we didnt want to do. And we felt we spent more time training staff on how to update the site than they actually spent updating it.
It was just easier for us to open DW and FTP our files to the server.