Been a while since I dug into October, but last I checked its back-end admin area was very much developer-focused (as opposed to non-technical site maintainer)... editing content required editing actual code in a textarea. Has this been addressed in the system at all (or is it even a design goal?)
Exactly what i thought too. I couldnt find the reason for using admin area since my clients wouldnt be able to use it. I guess the idea is to create admin app for clients and this makes sense on big projects it can be done much faster when you do something standard.
Depends on how you set it up. I usually use the RainLab.Pages plugin to have a nice interface for clients to manage page content instead of having them use the CMS editor.
I'm looking forwards to the frontend editing component that's coming to October soon, it should make client interaction with the site much nicer.