SOFTWARE ENGINEERING blog & .lessons_learned
manuel aldana
Manuel Aldana

cms4_aldana

Some time ago, when I did not need a blogging functionality, my website was based on an own developed content-management-system (CMS). In the first place I tried to re-use others valuable done work, by using already existing CMSs. Problem was, that they all did not fit my needs to easily manage my static sites. Either they were overengineered CMS-monsters like Joomla or Typo3, or were to simple. I searched for a CMS, where I could organize and write my contents in a simple way and could concentrate on content. Further more I looked for a solution, which offered a strong separation between content and presentation and did not need a database backend. This solution did not show up, so the best way was to write an own CMS.
To have a look how my old site looked like from following screenshot:
screenshotCMS4_aldana
Here the USPs of my CMS:

  • Works with PHP 5, which is offered by (nearly) all webhosters
  • In difference to many CMS does not need a database like MySQL
  • Contents are structered in categories, which is basically the same as familiar file-system directory structure
  • Contents are organized in an easy-to-edit XML-config file
  • Easy change of custom look-and-feel of site through templating and CSS

So, want to easily set up a small (<100 pages) personal website with static content, without writing low-level HTML all the time and organizing links and categories? Remember to bring some little basic knowledge about PHP scripting language with you.

For more information just follow subpages.