GetSimple is a light-weight open-source Content Management System written in PHP and utilises XML for data storage. It is not dependent on any database and only requires an UNIX/Linux host, Apache with PHP 5.2. Windows IIS support has been claimed with some success.
Ideal for small to medium sized websites, it has the usual array of plugins to extend functionality further including bloging, contact forms, galleries and a shopping cart to list a few. A few themes are now available, however like any other good cms or blogging tool, a theme of your own can be created and built upon and you can even maintain this via the admin panel. Support is provided by a vibrant community via the popular forum and from within the docs pages.
SimpleCMS was relatively simple to install and configure. In a nutshell; you just extract the files and upload to the web server. Then open the site in the browser to follow the instructions to complete the installation.
If you are building a small site and a feature bloated cms or blog plaform seems overkill, then GetSimple is the perfect solution. Its admin UI is clean, tidy and easy to use with a comprehensive WYSIWIG editor. Personally, I am looking forward to continuing to use this on my own projects for a good time to come and will try my hand at creating a theme and maybe a plugin; so watch this space.
TruBru was developed using the ever popular WordPress platform. I created the theme from scratch with help from a great tutorial at Web Designer Wall as well as the WordPress Codex.
Before I designed the theme, I reviewed other blogs out there to see which type of format I would like to follow. Sarah Parmenter’s blog at sazzy.co.uk was a good source of inspiration. I liked the format of Sarah’s blog as it was simple and straight forward with the main focus being the content and not adverts or bold design elements.
I found it best to consider all elements such as pages, single posts, archive, etc when designing the site. Once I was satisfied with the design I followed a process similar to that in the Web Designer Wall tutorial. I created a html/css template which contained all parts needed for the theme. This was then broken up in to separate chunks to create the final theme template files, inserting the php code snippets where appropriate.
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Previously about tea, this blog was re-launched in 2010 to talk about front end web development. Founded by Stuart Holmes, its main topics will be about what holds a website together such as html, css, javascript and also about web design.
I have been building websites for over 3 years to W3C standards in html and accessibility. The websites I design are stylised as clean, simple to use and include standard design elements to ensure a standard of usability.
I hope you enjoy this blog as much as I enjoy writing for it.
