Web CMS That Outputs to Flat Static Pages (.html) via FTP to Remote Server?

Question

I have a web app project that I will be starting to work on shortly. One of the features included is going to be a content management system where users can add content and then that content will be combined with a template and then output as a regular .html file. This .html file would then be FTPed to their own web host.

As I've always believed in not reinventing the wheel I figured I'd see if there are any quality customizable CMSes out there that do this already do this. For instance, Blogger.com allows you to post all of your content to your account there; but offers the option to let you use your own hosting. Any time you publish a new article then a new .html page is generated (as well as an updated index page with links to the new article) and then the updated content is FTPed to your own server.

What I would like is something like this that I can modify to more closely suit my needs.

Required Features:

• Able to host on my own server
• Written in PHP
• Users add content through their account, then when posted it is FTPed as .html to their server
• Any appropriate pages are also updated to link to the new content (like the index page or whatnot)
• Templateable
• Customizable

Optional (but very much desired) features:

• Written in CodeIgniter or a similar PHP framework

While CodeIgniter isn't strictly required, I would very much prefer it. It speeds up development time and makes things much easier to implement.

So - any suggestions? I've stumbled across a few CMSes that push to remote servers as static pages, but the ones I've found all are hosted on the developers servers which means that I cannot modify it at all.

Thanks again fellow StackOverflowians!

-Sootah

Answer 1

Adobe Contribute might work for your situation. A developer/designer creates a set of templates with Dreamweaver and publishes the templates. Authorized users can then create pages based on the templates and only make changes within the editable regions. It includes systems for drafts and reviews prior to publishing (via many options, including ftp) and incorporates automatic version control. It can work with static html pages or dynamic pages like php.

Answer 2

Sounds like you need a separate application that can do this for you.

For example, you should be able to write something that queries Drupal's menu router and saves the output (with curl) to a directory and then run's rsync to push your content where you want it to go.

Otherwise your requirements are likely to be outside the scope of a typical CMS. Separating this functionality will give you better options.

You'd need to write a filter for your URLs too. It's a bit of work...

Hope that helps!