Custom cms / site builder. How best to accomplish this for my clients?

Hi all,

I have been scratching my head these last few weeks trying to find a viable (cheap and easy) solution to producing a simple website builder. I’m pretty old hat and have to manually update my clients websites and it’s starting to make me sick (literally). I’m not adverse in php, only the bare basics.

What I have been thinking is that I should really start to offer all my clients a custom cms whereby they can produce a simple little website and publish / edit it themselves straight from my own website. I have found a great little cms that will allow me to do this, it has a great theme, a fantastic back end system that does everything I require and it’s dirt cheap. It would require some modifications to get it just right for me but I have worked this out with the developer and it wont be a problem with a few paid for alterations.

What I am struggling to understand is how exactly I offer my clients this cms as a hosted package? Ideally, I would like my clients to create an account on my website and get started with no involvement needed from me. Think Webs, weebly, moonfruit etc but on a much smaller / simpler scale. I don’t have an ideas on how to go about this. I’m hoping some sort of script is available to help me do this but I haven’t found anything.

Has anyone any suggestions on how best to accomplish this? I had a look at some of the white label solutions but they cost a small fortune, some as much as $40 per month, per customer. That doesn’t leave me much room to play with.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Steve

Hi Steve,

Have you looked into Wordpress or ExpressionEngine?

Anthony.

I’d say Wordpress too… I almost stopped doing custom CMS. Not woth the time. Still keep some code but each customer is so different. Wordpress has a solid user base, it is easy and you can invest your PHP time in customize it if necessary.