I've been designing and building sites for a few years now - using HTML/CSS. When the site goes live, either I do occasional updates for the client or they use CUSHYCMS. I've been evaluating DB driven CMSs for a while now (Joomla, WP, C5) and found myself battling against them rather than being able to work with them - Couch is perfect for me - design and create the site and then integrate the CMS - I'm loving it and am about to deploy my first Couch site in the next couple of days.
But the change to a DB CMS site from a static site is slightly scary too. And I was wondering if other web designers on this forum have any advice to offer:
My main concerns are around ongoing maintenance ... for example upgrades to PHP. I'm imagining when I have a growing number of sites on Couch - it could amount to a lot of work if I have to spend time on this sort of thing. And of course to a client this sort of work is meaningless to them - it is all behind the scenes and they wouldn't want to pay for my time doing any essential maintenance work I'm sure. Do other web designers build in an annual fee for this sort of thing?
The other main question I have is how should I handle database backups once the site has gone live? Again I'd rather not have to have any ongoing involvement in a site once it has gone live. But if I have to - I will need to start quoting my prices differently to clients - i.e. make them aware of costs of maintaining a CMS site.
But the change to a DB CMS site from a static site is slightly scary too. And I was wondering if other web designers on this forum have any advice to offer:
My main concerns are around ongoing maintenance ... for example upgrades to PHP. I'm imagining when I have a growing number of sites on Couch - it could amount to a lot of work if I have to spend time on this sort of thing. And of course to a client this sort of work is meaningless to them - it is all behind the scenes and they wouldn't want to pay for my time doing any essential maintenance work I'm sure. Do other web designers build in an annual fee for this sort of thing?
The other main question I have is how should I handle database backups once the site has gone live? Again I'd rather not have to have any ongoing involvement in a site once it has gone live. But if I have to - I will need to start quoting my prices differently to clients - i.e. make them aware of costs of maintaining a CMS site.