The 4th tutorial in our CMS series is now available online to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers. This CMS solution involves Pulse CMS, which is the first full-blown Content Management System to be covered. I have chosen to start with Pulse CMS because you host it on your own server alongside your website, which is a great advantage because all of your content exists on one server, opposed to some of it existing on another server that you have no control over.

In advance of viewing this Pulse CMS tutorial, I recommend viewing the “Working With an FTP Application” lesson, which can be found under Section 301 of the tutorials. This lesson will get you comfortable with publishing files to your server via FTP, which is required to install Pulse.

More CMS solutions will be covered in the weeks to come, alongside a variety of custom stacks and even a few new RapidWeaver plugins.

Tags: RapidWeaver 4, Content Management Systems, CMS, screencasts

I am happy to announce the launch of a new series of tutorials on Content Management Systems! As mentioned in my previous blog entry, I have been researching different CMS solutions and I have now begun to produce screencasts on the subject. The launch of this series begins with 3 video tutorials, which are now available to RapidWeaver Classroom subscribers. More tutorials will be released in the coming weeks, with the goal of providing the most comprehensive coverage of options available to RapidWeaver users.

Once again, if you have any experience using a CMS with RapidWeaver, please comment here and let me know your thoughts. I have developed a list of solutions (see previous blog entry), but am open to other options and I am interested in personal experience with any of them.

Not a RapidWeaver Classroom subscriber? Register now for access to these, and 170+ other RapidWeaver video tutorials!

Tags: RapidWeaver 4, CMS, Content Management Systems, screencasts

I am currently researching and learning various Content Management Systems and why they may or may not be good solutions for use with RapidWeaver. Allowing for user-editable content outside of RapidWeaver has always been difficult to solve, as RapidWeaver wasn’t created with that feature. Various plugin-ins and stacks have been released over time that address this issue, but how you know which one to choose and how to use it? This is a deep topic and one that I have wanted to address for a long time, and I think we’re at the point now where enough solid options are available to where I can make recommendations and explore all of the available options to some degree.

My research and testing will result in a new series that covers different types of content management -- not exclusively limited to online CMS systems. Video tutorials will be produced over the next weeks, culminating in a comprehensive resource. Here is a list of what I have been working with so far:

• Google Docs and PlusKit
• RapidBlog
• CushyCMS
• SurrealCMS
• WebYep
• Pulse
• PageLime
• Unify
• Dynamic Content Stacks from Blueball Design
• CMS/CSS Stacks from Joe Workman

If you have experience with any of these, or with something else altogether, please comment on this post and I might contact you personally for more information. As I mentioned, this is a deep subject and everyone can benefit more from feedback based on your own experiences.

Tags: RapidWeaver 4, CMS, Content Management Systems, dynamic content, screencasts