How to install CMS?

[alexburi@gmail.]

Hi,

I am wondering how CMS is installed.

Do you start from scratch using CMS to create your website, which then has the functionality of users logging into the CMS and uploading content?

or...

Do you code your website and then when you are finished, install a CMS package that *then* allows useres to login and upload content?

Thanks...

ps. any suggestions on the best free CMS services out there for simple to moderately complex websites?

Alex

[VIPStephan]

Good CMSs allow for custom skinning/theming and templating so ideally you would create your plain HTML/CSS layout and then implement the HTML pages you created into a CMS as custom template(s). With simple layouts that would probably just require a template for the home page and a template for other pages.

Very good CMSs I can recommend are CMS Made Simple (http://cmsmadesimple.org) and Concrete5 (http://concrete5.org). The former one is more aimed at web developers or people with a little background knowledge (although it’s not required) while the latter one is aimed at end users without much knowledge (of course the person setting it up and implementing the templates needs to know what to do).