A few weeks ago I posted some great hosted CMS’s that you can choose from if you don’t want to handle the general maintenance of using Content Management Systems. So this round up I would like to focus on something a bit different but still in the CMS’s realm.
Anyway, one of the best things about using Content Management System (CMS) is the ability to control the content, site functionality and even the layout through an easy to use system. You see that nearly everyone from the smallest one person show to the largest corporation use some sort of a CMS.
But some of these systems can be a hog of resources that can be a bit of overkill for a basic site on a shared hosting. But today I would like to showcase to you some lightweight Content Management Systems options that web designers and web developers can use or offer to clients.
1. Baun
Baun is a modern, lightweight, extensible CMS for PHP. Inspired by Pico, Baun has been desgined from the ground up as a modern PHP application whilst retaining the same features that made Pico so popular such as it’s simple as it makes creating and maintaining a website as simple as editing text files, it’s fast as Baun was designed with performance in mind, and no database, making Baun blazing fast, it uses the Twig templating engine, for powerful and flexible templates and it’s open source.
2. Grav
Grav is not your average CMS, it’s an open source, flat-file NoDB CMS written for PHP 5.5.9+ that is focused on being fast, easy to learn and use, with powerful features to enable it be easily extended.
As content is just simple markdown files in folders, with no complicated databases to deal with and it’s a powerful API and extensive hooks allow for plugins to extend Grav and a comprehensive package manager provides easy installation and updating of extensions.
3. Pico
Pico is a stupidly simple, blazing fast, flat file CMS. That’s definitely a mouthful, what does it even mean? In the most basic sense, it means that there is no administration backend or database to deal with.
You simply create markdown files in the content folder and those files become your pages. There’s much more to Pico than that though.
4. Anchor
Anchor is a super-simple, lightweight blog system, that make you just write.
Anchor gives you full freedom over your words, as installing this CMS isn’t the famous five-minute install, it’s the tantalising two-minute install. Creating and modifying a theme is as simple as knowing some very simple PHP and HTML/CSS. Make every article unique with the ability to add custom CSS, JavaScript, and HTML to any blog post or page.
You can add or remove an infinite amount of custom fields to any post or page at the click of a button. Anchor has been, is, and always will be 100% free of charge to everyone but to keep Anchor small, it’s only support the latest browsers so no more IE6/7/8.
If you see something you want to improve in Anchor? You can help by contribute on GitHub as everything’s hosted there.
5. SageCMS
A CMS made lightweight, the open source content management, SageCMS is simple, fast, functional and powerful than ever. Catering well with your information in all possible ways, the CMS is easy to install and use via a simple web interface.
Online templating is one of the functional features in SageCMS that allows you to download free or paid templates from the dashboard itself by making your website building process absolutely hassle free.
With the less system resources, lightweight gives up the support of all Web standards for a faster performance.
6. Dropkick CMS
Dropkick CMS is for any HTML, Bootstrap or PHP template. You know the drill. You just want a few editable pages or elements on a page for clients to edit.
They have a site already (or even if it’s a new project) and why go to the trouble of using a full-blown CMS with an awkward templating system that is easily hacked.
Dropkick is a simple CMS that fits right into your HTML template from any web framework or any software export? Why not keep it simple and just give clients permissions to edit the bits they need? For those little projects when editing a few pages is enough, use Dropkick.
7. Perch
Perch brings the content management, you bring the design, a CMS shouldn’t be dictating your front-end code.
With Perch, you bring your own code to your project created something bespoke for that one special client, a design built on a popular framework like Bootstrap or Foundation, or a time-saving off-the-shelf template from a theme site.
As Perch is a brilliant choice if you need to retrofit an existing site with a CMS, or just make some small parts of the site editable. Perch has no themes or inbuilt mark-up. Develop your own starting points, or start from scratch. You’ll never have to overrule our decisions first. It costs $69 per website. That’s a one-time cost. You can try it out locally for free first.
8. Pagekit
Pagekit is a modern open source CMS, with the whole user interface powered by Vue.js.
It’s quite fast and uses Symfony Components means that the system architecture is both modular and extendable. The central place to manage your content is the Site Tree. Set up your menu structure, edit your pages and manage widgets. All in one interface, with simple drag and drop.
Creating content is made easier with an included HTML & Markdown editor with the ability to preview changes in real time and there’s also a nice Marketplace, with a selection of Themes and Extensions you can use to make the most of your website.
9. CouchCMS
CouchCMS is a simple open-source CMS for designers, which you can take any HTML/CSS template and make it CMS enabled in minutes.
Just drop in a few special XHTML tags into your code and watch your static web pages come to life, as it can be retrofitted into any existing static site and if you got knowledge of PHP don’t worry as it not required. CouchCMS has some most noticeable features such as editable regions, SEO friendly links, paypal integration and auto validating forms.
None of the listed features above will require you to write even a single line of PHP, as a web-designer or front-end coder, we want you to concentrate on what you do best, design and create HTML/CSS code. Leave the rest to Couch.
10. Postleaf
Build your next blog or website with a beautifully designed, open source platform created for the modern publisher with Postleaf. It’s a free, open source CMS that runs on Node.js. This system runs incredibly fast, a minimal admin panel that just makes sense.
The first open source platform to feature a true WYSIWYG experience. Create your content on a page, not in a form. Backup your data, themes, and uploads. Postleaf generates a single zip file for everything, and simple JSON exports that are easy to work with.
Postleaf has everything you need, but nothing you don’t.
