Back-end Help

[gamerzfuse]

here is the scenario:
for school i can recieve credits through a virtual co-op program.
for this program i need to create a website for a tree farm company, where they have the ability to change things at will, and make news updates easily.

I have dreamweaver and need to know the basics of how i would approach this.
Am i looking at Dynamic to be the way to go? it is not a huge site, but it may require updates sometimes.

If it is dynamic couls someone point me in the right direction.
If i can do this with simple static html, could someone point me in this direction?

i am thinking that an administrative back end would be useful for them to login and change things if possible??

thanks in advance.
CraiG

[codemonster]

I see no one has responded to this one yet...

The answer is 'it depends'.

It depends on how much time you truly want to invest into this project.
It also depends on the server you are hosting it on.

The EASIEST and most PROFESSIONAL thing to do would be to customize an install of Joomla! for that company. That is an opensource CMS that will get you the logon features for article management, while maintaining a professional look. (so you can focus on the graphical layout).

If the course you are taking is focussing on coding, and not design, then create a mini-CMS system from scratch using PHP. You don't even need to store the values in a database. Just use include text files that contain just content (and you can secure the others as read-execute only). Then you could have a secure SSL form where the client can edit the text on the pages.

Other considerations include: do you have sFTP, webdav, FTP access to server? Will the client?

Lots of variables in the project here.

[ronaldb66]

How proficient are you in (X)HTML, CSS and server side languages, and how much time do you have for this? A hand rolled CMS sounds nice, but it make take a lot of time to put it all together.

[jlhaslip]

Might look at cutenews.
A simple content management system that you still need to code into the site by hand.
Uses text-files, with the ability for the user to update stuff themselves.
cutenews (http://cutephp.com/)

[gamerzfuse]

thanks alot guys for the replies.
the time frame is approximately 110 hours or 200 hours, depending on the amount of credits i want.

I have some experience in html and css, but not alot in xhtml or using server side language.

The client does not care how things work, they just want it workable.

Hosting will most likely be a decent online host paid monthly, nothing too great.

The site does not need to be terrible deep, which is why i was hoping to avoid use of database(s).