Design a Simple 1-Man CMS

Prototype 3 basically a test of how good XSLT is at building a website (screenshot) which has navigation, list of news, info boxes, meta tags, breadcrumbs navigation. The core CMS Engine in also extended in 3 ways. (more…)

My Idea of using customized windows folders (see vebwiew) as a GUI was noble, exciting but impractical. (more…)

As I mentioned in Content Management Philosphy structure should be seperated from content. This is often neglected in the much-quoted “seperate content from layout” buzz-phrase. But what is structure and why is it important? (more…)

Trying to make a simple CMS is not so simple. The urge is always there to produce a CMS which can do “everything” because of the risk of producing a CMS which is “too simple” and just can’t do some things. In fact, I want to produce a CMS Framework which CAN do “everything” BUT by clever use of defaults CAN ALSO be simple. (more…)

How does one specify which template a page has? In Prototype 2 each page had a <template> tag to specify it’s template. An attractive alternative springs to mind based on the following disadvantages of the <template> tag. (more…)

Just thought I’d jot down some more guiding principles:

• Zero-Code - Try to minimize coding (read bugs)
• Stand on the shoulders of giants
• No proprietary languages/syntax

This prototype is basically an improvement on the previous one. It properly implements the concept of global components which can be “blocks of content” and adds functional elements, such as a navigation menu. Each page has a <template> tag which specifies which template is to be used.
Download prototype2.zip.gif and remove the .gif extension.

This prototype is just a test of the basic concepts discussed in Definitions. The system consists of several folders containing the XML page files, templates, CSS styles, images, global components and configuration files. (more…)

I want to avoid a database if possible. Let’s run with the XML Theme and store everything in XML Files. One great big XML file for everything is out. I like the directory approach because it leaves navigation up to the operating system. A webmaster can browse folders to find templates, components and page data. (more…)

Is TAL an alternatuve to XSLT which can be more easily edited, managed and understood by webmasters? (more…)