Today we are going to take you through a review of the aptly named, CompactCMS. As Xander Groesbeek explains it, the system he created known as CompactCMS, was the result of the frustration he witnessed his end-users experience with the Joomla content management system.
The goal of CompactCMS is to simplify content management duties, period. Made up of a modest 661 extracted files, the size of CompactCMS is on the lean side relatively speaking and its requirements follow suit as well requiring only an Apache server, PHP4+, MySQL database, and the Apache mod_rewrite() module activated. With just one table containing sixteen fields, this content management system’s name is well chosen.
Installation
My installation went exactly as described in the documentation provided on the CompactCMS website. After creating my database on my webhost, I entered its credentials into the sitemap.php file located in the lib directory of the CompactCMS installation. Once configured, the default website came up offering two menus the first of which is dynamic and takes you to a handful of pages that include different looks and functionality. The second offers community links for CompactCMS users.
Creating A New Page
By clicking the Back to the admin hotlink, I made my way to the administrative interface. To create my first page, I clicked the link Create a new page and a slick drop down appeared allowing me to enter pertinent details of my content page. Notice that I had the options to make my new page printable, active, and had the choice of including php code or not.
Content Pages
After my new page was created, I still had to add some content into it. Mike’s Page showed up at the top of the list and I simply clicked the Edit link located on the far right. TinyMCE is the editor included in CompactCMS and is presented in a nice, clean fashion separated from the body of the web page. In other systems, the editor often requires customization due to designs such as fixed-width, multi-column layouts which limit how the editor can be displayed. The CompactCMS incorporates the editor within a window that is draggable, making those limitations irrelevant.
Coding Pages
With CompactCMS, you also have the option of creating a code page. A code page is similar to the traditional content page except that it allows you to place .php code in the page itself. A nice contact us page is included in the default installation of the CompactCMS that you can not only configure to your liking and situation, but learn from as well. A usable feature for those with some coding skills, who want to learn, or who can afford to hire out. In my case, I made the typical changes specific to my website, and the contact form worked great.
Menu Management
CompactCMS offers menu management including the ability of assigning the menu type, template design, level and link to every page created. It takes a little getting used to on how the options affect the website so I had to take some time to experiment. The system does a decent enough job but could get confusing pretty quickly with more than a few dozen pages.
Templates
Essentially the different looks that are offered from the default installation are single style sheets applied to the index.php page in the root directory. To create a custom look and feel you can either copy and modify one of the existing templates or create your own from scratch. It’s up to the user and their skill level and what approach is taken.
Overview
Even though the CompactCMS has some obvious limitations, I can see where users could find it appealing for the management of a very simple website. Once the design is created, the system could well suit a personal or small business website offering basic brochure information and limited functionality.
To better illustrate, live implementations using CompactCMS include the following:
http://www.rasasenang.nl
http://www.alamooptometry.com
http://www.capture-qc.com
Additionally, CompactCMS created a short video overview of the system as well.
Of course, you could hire an outside developer or the crew at CompactCMS is available if you require additional functionality which you are likely to need if website plans include anything but the basics. This seems to beg the question, why go for this system over other equally simple ones that provide a great deal more functionality for free? While I admire the spirit of simplicity on which it was built, this system has some growing to do in my opinion.
Pros
- Easy to use and configure.
- Quick and nimble.
Cons
- Viewing permissions is an all-or-none proposition.
- Limited templates. Those who want their own look and feel will have to either create it or hire out.
- Little additional functionality. Those who want additional functionality will have to either create it or hire out.
About the Author
Based in the Pacific Northwest, Michael Childress has been a system analyst and writer for 10 years. He currently writes for CMS Critic and is a full-time analyst.
About Mike Johnston
I'll start by confessing I am sold on ccms.
I have built websites using solutions as simple as phpwebsite (originally a phpnuke fork), Typo3 (which we ditched before delivery), Infoglue, and currently, Oracle's Site Studio built on Universal Content Manager (UCM).
As with the creator of CCMS, I too began to look into some of the more popular open source cma solutions including Drupal and Joomla.
The simple fact, at the end of the day, is that small business owners don't want to learn new technology. They want to grow their business. Anything that keeps their job simple is worth it's weight in gold.
Just today 8 handed over the reigns on my latest CCMS installation to my client. Our user training session lasted about 30 minutes and that included everything from creating new content, linking pages together, maintaining muliple menus, uploading PDF documents and managing your uploaded files, uploading and inserting images and working with the the image library, creating tables and applying different styles to content elements simply by choosing class names from a dropdown box.
You'd be hard pressed to achieve that with non technical clients using any of the other systems mentioned.
I do agree he features are somewhat limited, but I think that falls back to the 80-20 rule: you can gr 80% of what you need done using 20% of the more fully fledged systems. CompactCMS is that 20% of the other systems, which is why it keeps everything simple.
But watch this space. The community has voiced it's desire for a number of common features and the development team does respond. I firmly believe you will start to see this leightweight make headway against some of the more popular platforms. It's a niche product for a specific market and it is a good fit for small business.
In addiion to the festers you mentioned, the system uses SEO-friendly URLs and scored 96, grade A, for speed optimization on Yahoo's Content Delivery Network tests (YSLOW).
Two more example sites, the second using a custom shop listing module that I developed, are found here:
http://schoolpride.com.au http://originalsbynada.com.au
Chris.
Hi Mike,
First of all: thank you so much for taking the time to review the CCMS project. I'm very glad that the philosophy behind the project is clear from the information offered. No extensiveness, just basic editing.
Your review gave me some new insights into the perceivement of the menu editor. I'll surely take a look at it to see whether I can make it more clear. Perhaps (e.g.) indent subpages under the parent. Perhaps I could also make a tutorial on how to port free templates to work with CompactCMS, hopefully making the user less dependant of designers. As an indication: I myself took the included templates from the web and had them working with CCMS under ten minutes.
In regard to the extensiveness: module support (guestbook, lightbox) has only been added 8 days ago. I sincerely hope that it users will pick up this new feature and start developing modules for the outside world.
So I'll definitely use your feedback to improve the project.
Thanks :)!
Xander.
Hi Chris,
Thank you very much for the comments.
Like I eluded to in the post, I definitely think that CompactCMS shows promise and look forward to seeing the headway that they will make against other, more established systems like you mention.
It can be a slippery slope between simplicity and feature-rich. But CompactCMS appears to be off to a great start.
Thanks again,
Mike
You should review this again. Looks great now for small-scale projects up to a few hundred pages.
The system now supports add-on modules and some have been included for a news feed (blog), photo galleries, etc.
Further, there are now decent user accounts with multiple levels of security access.
Image upload/management has been simplified, and the WYSIWIG editor which has been chosen “just works”. I’ve tried a few and this one is the probably the smoothest for non-tech end users.
Also, install is a snap.