Drupal, Joomla!, and WordPress are undoubtedly the three most popular CMS platforms these days, and each has its purpose or area of expertise. For example, WordPress is the undisputed leader for informational sites and blogs, while for something more complex like an online store, I would prefer Drupal or Joomla!.
But that's not all... there are many other CMS platforms with their own unique features that we don't know about, and here I'll talk about FlatPress
FlatPress is undoubtedly the fastest CMS I've ever encountered. By this, I mean that opening pages, articles, the admin panel, or performing any task is incredibly fast. Why is this?
Simple, a CMS gets heavy for two things:
- All the PHP processing (which is the most common) that it would generate on the server.
- The need for a MySQL database (which is the most common), its connection to it to enter or search data, etc.
What if I told you that FlatPress is almost immune to this?
To begin with, it's so incredibly simple and that's what makes it so great, because the PHP processing it generates is minimal, minuscule 😉… if we add to that the fact that it DOESN'T use any database (not MySQL, not PostgreSQL, etc.)… well, seriously, it's VERY, very fast O_O
But it is not only fast, it is also easy to use, like all CMS today you can add themes to make the site or blog more pleasing to the eye, some of these themes even modify the appearance of the administration panel
And obviously… you can also add plugins
You can see an online demo of FlatPress here:
If you want to install FlatPress it is very simple, for example ... if you want to do it on your own computer, you must first install the packages:
apache2 libapache2-mod-php5 php5
Once these packages are installed, our Apache server should already be started.
Now let's put the following command in a terminal:
sudo mv /var/www/ /var/www-default && mkdir ~/www/ && sudo ln -s ~/www/ /var/www/
This will create a folder in our home directory called "www", and whatever we put in that folder will be what we see when we open http://localhost/
If that doesn't work, restart the Apache service. On distributions like Debian or derivatives it's ( I think it works the same on CentOS and Fedora ):
sudo service apache2 restart
In Arch Linux it is:
sudo /etc/rc.d/apache2 restart
Well, now we have to download FlatPress:
Once downloaded, extract the file to the www folder in your home directory, and go to http://localhost/flatpress/ to begin the installation
… and that's it!!!
What, surprised? …were you expecting something more complex?
Once this is done, they can access the site (same URL as before) and it will be shown as it comes by default:
Using the Login button on the right sidebar, you can access the Administration Panel (AdminArea) :
Using the options here you can modify many things… for example, as we saw above, to put another nicer theme …
First, we search the FlatPress Wiki for the theme we want: [Wiki] FlatPress Themes
Once we download it, we copy it to ~/www/flatpress/fp-interface/themes/ and that's it, we can select it using the Themes button in the AdminArea, that button located in the black bar.
And you can also add plugins: [Wiki] FlatPress Plugins
This, as you can see, is something really simple and easy… but many times that is exactly what we are looking for
There are times when we don't want to make a blog or a site as big as DesdeLinux itself, there are times when we just want to make personal notes, or save code, or write school assignments or something like that... well, for cases like these (and others) FlatPress is an excellent option
I learned about this one thanks to elav , and now I'm curious to learn about other lightweight CMSs... Perseo told me about Octopress , I really need to see how lightweight it is, and how complex its installation (and the packages it needs) is hehe.
Anyway, I don't think there is much more to add. Let me know any problem or doubt, I will try to help you as much as I can.
Greetings