Are there any CMS editors out there which users can populate locked down HTML templates with content and submit, but in a very, very stripped down way?

Question

Hi there,

We work in email marketing, creating HTML/TEXT emails for clients. In essence we design HTML email templates for our clients. Clients then post us content (via a form) to populate these templates before we send them out. Right now we do this manually, basically cutting and pasting the content from their submitted form into the relevant parts of the template, which is time consuming and particularly mind-numbing.

What we're looking for (and have so far been unable to find) is a simple system which will allow us to capture this client content in a sort of WYSIWYG HTML format. Basically they populate a locked down version of the template, entering text where necessary, before submitting to us. This is our most basic requirement, and a friend of mine kindly demo'd a proof of concept here:

http://advantageone.co.uk/mbe/
Note: If you click on a text area in the body of the template, an editor pop ups.

Now what we are looking for a CMS editor out there which can be easily adapted to do the above and the following for our end clients?

• User login
• View previously submitted campaigns that they have created and edit these
• Create new - selecting from template (assigned to their user/client id), perhaps being able to add new rows to the template.
• And have these HTML templates locked down so they can only edit what they're allowed too (like in the demo above), and perhaps make some areas required.
• Perhaps have a simple workflow or approval built in
• Allow us to lock submitted campaigns after a point so they can't be further edited, and as administrators view all campaigns from all users
• Be so incredibly simple, with any extraneous functionality switched off

Essentially an extremley simple stripped down CMS, but we use the outputted HTML for sending out as an email, rather than publishing onto the web.

Now to the actual dilemma: we're looking for something really simple, and the above sounds like a CMS. But we haven't been able to find anything that already does, or can be easily adapted to do this. Everything is either too complex, or simple and inflexible. We're sure there must be something off the shelf available, rather than us coding something ourselves.

But we've kind of got stuck. Does anyone know of a system, or could recommend a system that can do the above out of the box, or with a few days tweaking?

Forgive me if this is a little disjointed, if I'm being incredibly dopey and there is something out there please let me know!

Kind regards,

Dp.

Answer 1

I'm certainly not a CMS expert, my experience is as you have already observed; there are a range of advanced editors embedded in various CMSs and there are others that offer little more than plain text capabilities.

What you are looking for is a vary specific point in the middle, and I wouldn't expect that you would find any sort of system that meets your needs.

Developing your own is probably the only reasonable solution; but although your requirements are very specific, they are also fairly simple, so if you don't have the skills in-house it should cost that much to get such a tool developed.

Good Luck!

Answer 2

Thanks for the help, I was heading in the same direction, build c/w buy, but was hoping there might be something out there.

We haven't got an in-house dev team. Any ideas as to which dev platform could most easily create such a solution? Something which would be quick and easy would be most useful ; )

Answer 3

Correct me if I'm wrong, but what you really want is a forms builder that takes the submitted form, reformats it using a template and then emails the resulting document to some number of users based on the form, right?

There must be hundreds of forms products perhaps you just didn't know to call it a form when you were searching for a CMS to do this.

(I hate to put a link to a specific forms product that I know about here because I fear looking like a shill for it.)

Answer 4

That would be one approach, but the problem with the form builder is you can't see what you're building whilst authoring it. Hence the HTML WYSIWYG bit. Unless you know of some that can ; ) Shill away!