Recommendations: Flat-file PHP CMS

CMS & WordPress
1

Hi,

I’m putting up a basic website for a friend – just a business-card job really – but I thought I’d see how much I can achieve with PHP available and no database. I found a couple of CMSes that work without a database – GetSimpleCMS and GuppY – but both are presenting a few difficulties.

I wonder if anyone here has had much experience with this type of CMS/blog engine and if so, do you have any recommendations?

Thanks in advance.

2

There’s always going to be a database. Even a flat-file is still a database, albeit a less capable and probably slow one. But if your real goal is to have a serverless, zero-configuration database, then I recommend SQLite. You get all the benefits of a SQL database, but it reads from and writes to an ordinary disk file.

EDIT: And, it looks like people have already tried – and succeeded – in making the popular CMSs work with SQLite.

http://api.drupal.org/api/drupal/INSTALL.sqlite.txt/7

3

Here are some other nice flat file / no database CMSes I’ve heard good things about:

http://www.pulsecms.com/
http://staceyapp.com/
http://www.cmsimple.org/
http://www.razorcms.co.uk/
http://cmsfromscratch.com/

In particular, I like Pulse, although it has a small cost.

4

One I’ve used recently with great results is Jebson. It’s open source and pretty easy to get the hang of.

-S

5

I’ve heard good things about Phrozn. http://www.phrozn.info/en/

First things first, how is a flat file setup slower than running from a database? There is absolutely nothing deployed but flat files.

Secondly, one of the big advantages of using something like Jekyll is that your entire site can be put into source control and deployed, backed up, and moved around with complete ease. It can also go on any server, regardless of setup. You can chuck SQLite into source control, but what is the point if you just want flat files? It’ll be faster to serve files instead of an embedded db.