I just finished a new CMS. (Yes another one). This is a very early build of it (I think I will call it v. 0.1), but I think it will give a representation of what this will be in the future. It is meant to be very, very easy to design for. Here is an online demonstration: http://gorgefamily.com/wdcms/. The admin username is Alec and the password is test. There is a link to the admin on the main page.

Here is a link to a zip file with all of files for the cms (unzipped size: 128k): wdcms.zip.

There is an installer in the zip file (install.php). You need PHP 4.2+, you need a MySQL database v. 4+.

If you want to theme for it just look at the themes that are in there currently. I will write more documentation, limitations, and planned updates and make a small website later. I am a bit exhausted from lots and lots of coding.

Post any bugs you encounter.

Thanks,

Alec

edit:
Okay I made a big round of updates that allow you to put content somewhere that is editable on any page, but applied to all pages, you can edit the menu titles, added more buttons and features to the WYSIWYG.

Clean URL's plus the ability to edit the page title / meta keywords and description would be good, otherwise it's like many of these other small CMS's — useless for SEO optimisation.

From a users point of view it does seem simple to use, although I would suggest you highlight the editable content region a bit when logged in so you know what is editable (e.g. highlight it from the rest of the page text).

@Neuen/Christopher: Wow! A quick response! I am going to bake clean urls in in the next few days (maybe today, with luck). I will make meta description and keywords also with the clean urls. Any suggestions on how to make it stand out? I need some thing that won't ever mess up a design and is obvious, pretty hard, I am thinking maybe a background color? I am not sure though.

@conartistdesigns: I am using Nicedit.

Wow Alec, this CMS is really cool! I like it very much, although I prefer flat file based CMS'. Any chance to make two versions?

NicEdit seems to me a little bit limited as it doesn't work properly in IE as Connor already mentioned. How about using markItUp! instead? This is a real webmaster's editor. I built an advanced version.

Have a look at the demo here. If you want it, just let me know.

What I'm missing is an upload function for images for directly inserting them.

But nevertheless, the CMS is great fun to work with. Keep us informed how your work is going on. Hundreds of

@coollew:
Thanks! I am trying hard!

The editor works fine in IE7, but I haven't tested in IE6 yet. Also, markItUp! won't work because I need the WYSIWYG editor to have one instance of the toolbar work for multiple area AND you have to be able to apply it to any tag (h3, div, span etc.)

Yes, I do need to make a image upload function, but that wasn't the highest thing on the list of priorities because of the extra work involved. The extra work would come because I need a good upload progress bar, and a php image manipulation library to resize the images. That will create even more work because then I have to test if the library is there then enable the upload function and on, and on, and on.

Yes, I don't have to do all the work and I could just make an uploader, but then it wouldn't be very good, and I know people will upload 4mb 2560x1980 images that they took. They will need to be resized.

Flat-file wise, I guess it could be possible, I only use 3 tables in my data base. I could do it, but I think I need to finish most of the features before I have to write my cms twice, while it is in development.

Again, I need help on clean url's. I am looking for a .htaccess and php approach so that I don't have to rewrite my entire cms. I think I may have found a solution, but I would still have to tweak a few thing for it to work right.

So much to do, so little time, school starts on Thursday!

@Neuen
I don't know what I did , but there was some extra stuff that broke the file. It is fixed now, thanks for looking around.

For the editing 'header' border I think it could use a bit of padding. Not that it really matters but I think it might look a little better.

Okay I made a big round of updates that allow you to put content somewhere that is editable on any page, but applied to all pages, you can edit the menu titles, added more buttons and features to the WYSIWYG.

Next update: image uploading and documentation.

The zip file was updated.

You should really check it out!

Add support for uploading files which the site owner can make available to his/her users, such as zip files for template designers, or mp3 files for musicians, or .pdf files for publishers or print-designers.

@gnome:
Yeah, that is a good idea, will work on that.

@wfiedler:
I am, maybe it didn't work right?

edit: I manually just edited the JS file to make it work!

Where i had much work while developing LightNEasy was UTF8 encoding/decoding and implementing language files (including the editor). A serious headaque are the rtl languages, like arabic and hebrew.
If you are still in the first stages of development, you will save a lot of work by taking that into account from the beginning.

fernbap:
Where do I start?

Multi-language support:

1. use a global array for all the messages the cms is to display
2. create a default language file (en), something like:

<?php
$textdirection="ltr";
$message[1]="my message 1";
$message[2]="message 2";
...
...
$message[n]="ERROR - message n";
?>


3. call that file something like "lang_en.php"
4. include the file at the start of your script (remember, the functions must include "global $message;" so that they can access the content of that array)
5. use $textdirection to display the header content-language metacommand

Yay! Errors are fixed!

I think those are very high quality 2 cents thezendesign, but you google indexs the page's content so having the two meta tags different on each wouldn't help very much. Anyways the meta tags are used as highly as they used to be so I don't really see the benefit.

Posted By: uberlemurguyI think those are very high quality 2 cents thezendesign, but you google indexs the page's content so having the two meta tags different on each wouldn't help very much. Anyways the meta tags are used as highly as they used to be so I don't really see the benefit.

Actually google displays meta tags of each page as small "snippet" sometimes so it would be quite useful and beneficial to use different meta tags for every page. At the end each page is somehow different and has its own content.

Some search engines still rely heavilly on meta tags and I wouldn't mind couple of more visitors on my sites because of unique meta tags on each page

Any more suggestions (I had a very busy week and couldn't work on the CMS so this is more of a BUMP).