First Larger-Scale Web Dev Project - Advice for Content Management?

I'm familiar with HTML, CSS, and some PHP and Javascript. I've made several fairly complicated websites for which I've acted as webmaster, manually adding all content in HTML.

I'm about to put in a proposal for my first outside client at a larger business. They have an IT person that would be responsible for updating the website that I create for them.

My question is what to do about content m开发者_高级运维anagement. I've looked into things like Drupal, but they seem overly complex for this kind of situation, with a single person adding updates of things like text, images, and PDFs.

What would you recommend as the next step above the simple way of manually uploading files and editing HTML like I'm used to? Something like a MySQL database and PHP calls? Would I then store all the images in the database as well?

I guess I'm just trying to figure out what's most common at a medium-sized business. I appreciate any guidance you can offer!

Nathaniel

My company has built large scale projects and medium scale as well. What we like to do is setup a outer page with navigation and an inside page that the client has control of by a control panel with FCK Editor or TinyMCE.

So essentially we have a wrapper page (in our case a MasterPage but in PHP you would use an include or a index.php with a query string to pull the content) and then we drop in HTML content from the database.

That database is populated by the client in their control panel. FCK Editor allows them to upload images and manage links, etc.

For our bigger clients we get very specific in our control panel allowing them to add videos, PDF attachments, blog entries, FAQ content, etc.

Some examples we have are http://pspwllc.com and http://needsontime.com and http://nwacasa.org

Drupal can be bit complex at first but if you stick with the basic modules - it is great for website content management.You can write your own mini content management system - store text and images(MySQL blob format) in MySQL.It will be couple of PHP admin pages and a good render() function responsible for page rendering.

Also have a look at wordpress, it is much easier than drupal. It is less powerful but it may serve your needs. You will NOT need to configure modules like FCKeditor, with it bcoz they come inbuilt. Anybody will be able to edit the content easily. Do note that wordpress is not just for blogs, you can create different kinds of websites with it. Another choice is Joomla, it is also simpler than drupal. But, wordpress is the simplest.