Looking for a very simple file-based CMS

Question

I'm building a site for a friend for free, and am trying to work out a good way for her to be able to easily make updates. I haven't used any CMSs before. I was browsing the web today looking at some, and they all seem way too complicated for what I'm after.

Basically, all I want is a really simple CMS that pulls together HTML snippets in particular subdirectories, and wraps them in header/footer HTML and inserts them into a template page in the appropriate section.

I'm imagining a site layout something like this:

/
/index.php
/blog_template.php
/news_template.php
/blog/
/blog/header.php
/blog/footer.php
/blog/my-first-blog.html
/blog/blogs-rule.html
/blog/...

Say index.php contains div#blog. PHP would wrap each /blog/*.html file in /blog/header.php and blog/footer.php, and insert them into the div#blog as div#blog([0-9]*).

I haven't been able to find anything this basic, and am one step away from throwing something together myself, but I'm a bit short on time at the moment and figured I'd post here first. Has anyone come across something like this?

I don't want any DB, extensions, user accounts, installation, config, updates... just a simple file based solution.

Thanks :)

Forgot to mention - needs to be FOSS and run on Linux!

Answer 1

Swift Point has a templating engine that loosely fits what you are talking about and it has a downloadable SDK (for Windows) that helps you to create the Swift Point template.

The main site is www.swift-point.co.uk and the developer documentation is at http://www.swift-point.co.uk/Content/Developer-Documentation/

Answer 2

I've used Bloxsom before, and it's a very simple blog that uses flat files for everything. You can add features with community developed plugins, but you don't have to. It's written in Perl, but doesn't require many CPAN modules to run.

Answer 3

Here's a couple:

• http://www.easycontent.org/
• http://www.lilcms.com/

Answer 4

check http://www.lightneasy.org/ mini