CMS without database – review of some good choices

April 22nd, 2011 at 01:25pm Jason 556 views

Some may regard it as archaic: A Content management system (CMS) without database. data is stored in text files on the server instead. Many web site owners perhaps will even doubt that this could work.

Nevertheless: In some situations it really makes sense to use a system without a database like mysql. Some good systems like Pivot, SkyBlueCanvas, RazorCMS or Pluck are available.

But before going in detail an answer to the questions: why real doing this? Most things run beautifully and well under WordPress anyway – so what for?

There are different possible reasons now:

Installation effort: Every database needs to be established. You may hardly notice this if you make a single web site. You see the difference doing 10 or more web pages.

Data security: Web site and database must always be saved. If you forget one of both nothing may run anymore. Securing a Mysql database is usually much more difficult and time consuming than to FTP server content

Speed: Highly visitied servers suffer from dramatic speed losses if too many database queries are carried out. So if there is a smaller project on this server it may slow down dramatically.

Simplicity: Why a Mercedes, if one only wants to fetch cigarettes? That is for small projects most cms are simply “too big”

Flexibility: to change something at a WordPress system may be difficult. Simpler Cms can often be adopted faster

Therefore I like to show some “lite” alternatives which I found at http://www.opensourcecms.com/, and after selecting and testing there installed successfully myself and liked:

Pivot (http://www.pivotlog.net/): To make it briefly: Pivot is a mature system that hardly leaves a wish open especially for a Blog. A great Community (at present 75,000 contributions) helps at all problems. Though: With 5.6 MB also no more straight “lite”, even if Pivot runs without Mysql database and stores everything as text files

SkyBlueCanvas Lightweight CMS (http://www.skybluecanvas.com/) is already considerably smaller with 2.8 MB. The less known system also shows a little lean “optic”. But under the hood there is considerably more than at Pivot: Numerous modules like news, form managers, picture administration and more already make it a mature CMS. The individual modules can be placed on various locations on the site.

Pluck (http://www.pluck-cms.org/) (similarly large as SkyBlueCanvas) comes with the Tinymice editor and offers considerably less modules but a clean and easy operator surface. Simple for a smaller project.

RazorCMS (http://www.razorcms.co.uk/) is far away from a Blog and by far also the smallest program. The Core is merely 200 kb in size. With some additional modules (called Plugins or Blades) and a WYSIWYG editor (you can choose one of 3 available, I used Nicedit being the smallest) with only just over 300 kb.
This is rewarded by a lightning speed in comparison with the colleagues and extremely flexible in many things.

Enjoy!

via: http://forums.digitalpoint.com/showthread.php?t=1073287

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