The Perfect CMS

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volomike
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The Perfect CMS

Post by volomike »

Here's what I think would be the perfect CMS.

The front-end uses a simplistic PHP way to pull content out of the SQLite, MySQL, or PostgreSQL database over PDO. But it does so just like WordPress does so that even if you're new to PHP, you can sort of understand it. WordPress relies on EZSQL, so this could rely on EZSQL.

So, to retheme it, you do it much like you do with WP -- you grab an XHTML/CSS template and just follow a short tutorial to edit a header, footer, page, post, and sidebar template file, throwing in the EZSQL snippets based on a simplistic default. And whatever file you don't edit, it uses a default. The same goes with a CSS related to that theme file.

To me, WP has the most awesome retheming system out there for those who are given XHTML/CSS templates. I haven't found any better CMS in this regard -- not even Drupal.

The admin back-end, however, is designed for the client in mind with two security modes -- admin and simple. In simple mode, that's for your client admin, and they can create, edit, and remove content. The admin mode can do all that and everything else.

The first thing you do in the admin backend is create your content forms. You decide what fields will be used and we do not assume Title, Category, Tags, and Body. Instead, you can use the default form of Title, Category, Tags, and Body, but you can also remove those fields and replace them with something else entirely, like defining clothing products.

What the client sees ultimately in the admin system is a sort of MS Explorer interface of content folders with records in them. This is where they can click something like, "Add New Automobile", update the form with the fields for an automobile, and it's up to the custom rethemer guy (or developer) to display those fields the way they want.

And it needs a module system just like in WordPress where you can add a module for extra functionality anywhere in the front-end or backend, but if you remove the module all the source code goes back the way it was.

You see, right now I'm building a truck modification website. They have different product types and want to display them a special way per product type. Wordpress can give me this with the Flutter plugin, but the admin system is kind of quirky for newbie admins actually in my opinion. Drupal has this with the CCK modules, but again this is quirky for the newbie admin to work with. It seems no one is thinking of making an admin system that's extremely simplistic for the average client mindset, with an interface like putting files in folders. Only instead of files, it's records. And these records can have any custom form fields you want in them.

One of these days I need to build something like this.
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