Building a simple CMS

Question

1. Which language is generally used for a very simple CMS?
2. Can someone recommend a very simple CMS tutorial?

Answer 1

Try CMSimple. Its User's Manual can be used to get started with it.

Answer 2

Ruby on Rails and CakePHP (basically a PHP version of Rails) are very easy to jump into (if you want to develop a "custom" solution). I recommend PHP for simple CMSes; easy to get started and configure and so on. You might also want to try a hosted solution as well, something like Cushy CMS which ties into an FTP account and allows you to add "managed content areas." I've also heard very nice things about Expression Engine in this regard as well. Don't forget that the Wordpress platform can be quite easily configured/hacked to act as a decent cms as well (and with what can be a 2-3 minute set up time-frame, overhead is quite low).

Answer 3

CMS is one of those things that can be written by anyone in almost any language, and often is as a learning exercise. Actually doing it well is not easy. If this is not a learning exercise you're better off taking an existing framework as the basis and extending it.

Drupal can be quite lightweight, but scale with plugins if needed. The site has quite a few handbooks including a getting started guide

Answer 4

I would second PHP for building a simple CMS. There are hundreds of tutorials available, PHP is widely supported by hosting companies, and it is generally the language of choice for common open source CMS systems, such as Wordpress.org, Expression Engine etc.

If you want to get up an running with a CMS quickly from an existing site and are not bothered about learning about building one, CushyCMS or PageLime are good options for editing existing HTML sites.

Answer 5

Any language can be used to create a CMS, and chances are that any language you can think of has several CMSs written in it.

If you're looking to build your own a good starting point may be to look at existing projects on CodePlex and/or Sourceforge.

Answer 6

PHP is the prefered programming language for a huge contingent on the web, to make simple as well as huge-complex CMSes. & MySql is the prefered Database. So you can learn PHP & MySql, and hopefully make your own CMS someday. All the Best.