Rudimentary CMS
Recently, NCC launched Chase the Lion, a microsite built for a seven-week series based on a new book from our pastor. While developing this site, I determined that the data management needs weren’t quite so heavy that we needed to implement a full CMS, like ExpressionEngine or WordPress. And even though it isn’t difficult to build a site with a full CMS backend, it does take enough extra effort that it isn’t worth the time in certain scenarios—e.g., in very time-sensitive operating environments like ours.
For Chase the Lion, I built a very simple CMS by hand. During the last few months, I’ve tweaked a small framework that I use when starting a new project. (I’ll write up a bit more on my framework and may even post it for public consumption if enough folks want to see it.) In this project, I upped the ante even further to create a very rudimentary PHP-based CMS that can be used to power small, mostly static sites. It is simple for the site to extend, but the tool can only be leveraged by me (or anyone with basic web development skills). There is no admin CP, no WYSIWYG editor and no file organizer. It’s barebone, but I think that’s the beauty of it. Sure, I could build the CP, add support for data storage in a MySQL database, add that pretty WYSIWYG editor and let an administrative assistant go wild, but why should I? Sometimes the site content changes very slowly (or never) and can’t really merit adding weight by integrating that full-featured CMS.
