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Ask HN: A simple CMS for non-tech users?

6 points by BerislavLopac ↗ HN
I've been wondering, is there a simple CMS tool which could be used for basic Web sites for non-tech-savvy users?

I've been using Wordpress for such sites, but it has become a bit over-complex, with a lot of superfluous features which are quite confusing for non-techies.

Ideally, I'm looking for something that would have the following features:

a) Written in PHP and using SQLite database, for ease of deployment and portability. b) Has basic content types: post, page and media (or images at least). Media must be simple and easy to place within the content. c) Integrated contact form. d) Simple and easily modified templating system, preferrably also in PHP.

Any ideas?

8 comments

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rokhayakebe
I have not seen anything as simple as Wordpress. I am currently using it to create a website builder. It works pretty well.
BerislavLopac
Just a clarification: I'm looking for simple to use, not (only) simple to install.
tonystubblebine
Would anyone be interested in a hosted web service along these lines? I took a stab at extracting a similar set of features from CrowdVine, but I'm not sure if it's worth pursuing.

The site is: http://big.ly

My idea was that websites get set up originally by people who want to get under the hood. So I made all of the templates overridable using Ruby's Liquid templating engine.

After the initial setup, they're run by complete Normals. So all of the editing is wysiwyg (through TinyMCE).

Other features are a custom domain and tab/subnav management. I didn't get as far as a contact form, but that was on my list.

Rust
If you want, a plugin could be written to simplify WPs administration area. It would be easy enough to hide things that you don't want admins to see by default ("n00b" mode), useful stuff that won't break the site ("l33t" mode), and everything available ("hax0r" mode). A custom setting in the user profile would be enough to trigger it.
brianto2010
I've found a cool wiki-like software that is fairly simple to use and might fill your CMS needs. It resides within one HTML file meaning good portability, and has a large community attached. However, I forgot the name and spent the past half-hour looking for it.

http://www.tiddlywiki.com/

onceuponkauai
i think concrete5 is all right. It uses a mysql back-end but might be overkill. I know the click to edit stuff works pretty well.

I have noticed that benchmarks are slower as they don't really have a full page cache mechanism, but overall it does a pretty nice job for that niche.

frz
were actually working on full static page cache now. -best