CMS Made Simple (CMSMS) is a free,

open source Open source is source code that is made freely available for possible modification and redistribution. Products include permission to use the source code, design documents, or content of the product. The open-source model is a decentralized sof ...

(

GPL The GNU General Public License (GNU GPL or simply GPL) is a series of widely used free software licenses that guarantee end users the four freedoms to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was the first copyleft for general us ...

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content management system A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content (content management).''Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy''. Ann Rockley, Pamela Kostur, Steve Manning. New ...

(CMS) to provide developers, programmers and site owners a web-based development and administration area. In 2017 it won the CMS Critic annual award for Best Open Source Content Management.2010 Best PHP Open Source CMS
Packt Publishing (2010)

Software Design

CMS Made Simple is an open source package, built using

PHP PHP is a general-purpose scripting language geared toward web development. It was originally created by Danish-Canadian programmer Rasmus Lerdorf in 1993 and released in 1995. The PHP reference implementation is now produced by The PHP Group ...

with support for

MySQL MySQL () is an open-source relational database management system (RDBMS). Its name is a combination of "My", the name of co-founder Michael Widenius's daughter My, and "SQL", the acronym for Structured Query Language. A relational database o ...

. Although

PostgreSQL PostgreSQL (, ), also known as Postgres, is a free and open-source relational database management system (RDBMS) emphasizing extensibility and SQL compliance. It was originally named POSTGRES, referring to its origins as a successor to the In ...

was previously supported, the developers chose to remove PostgreSQL support and recent versions no longer support any database except MySQL. The template system is driven using the

Smarty SMARTY is a mobile telephone flanker brand operated by Hutchison 3G UK Limited using its Three UK branded Cellular network, mobile network. It aims to attract customers primarily looking for cheaper deals than those available direct from Three, ...

Template Engine. CMS Made Simple aims to provide easy development and customization with themes, add-on modules, dynamic menus, tags and translations. When developing a new feature, the tab opens full of default text. The developer starts by erasing the bits he doesn't need, and then adding further tags that link to plugins, known here as modules. As it suggests you customise existing working markup code.

Features and Intended Audience

CMS Made Simple has a web-based admin section for theme, template, and style-sheet development, installing and updating add-on modules, configuring page content blocks, and user groups and permissions. As a development tool, CMS Made Simple has an intended audience of the more experienced developer. Developing an effective site requires a working knowledge of at least HTML and CSS. Whilst there is support for installation and subsequent application of a pre-designed theme (such as those available on

Drupal Drupal () is a free and open-source web content management system (CMS) written in PHP and distributed under the GNU General Public License. Drupal provides an open-source back-end framework for at least 14% of the top 10,000 websites worldwide ...

), the system allows for the direct coding of page templates in HTML/CSS with the dynamic elements called in using Smarty tags. Once a CMS Made Simple website is built, using the system for day-to-day content management tasks such as maintenance of a gallery, maintenance of news/blogs and page editing is designed to be straightforward and manageable by non-technical individuals such as site owners.

Modules and Themes

Modules

CMS Made Simple itself is designed as a base package that does not impose unnecessary modules and functionality on the user. It requires that site owners add modules and tags appropriate to the site. A small number of core modules are included with the default installation, notably a news manager, search function, and

WYSIWYG In computing, WYSIWYG ( ), an acronym for What You See Is What You Get, is a system in which editing software allows content to be edited in a form that resembles its appearance when printed or displayed as a finished product, such as a printed d ...

editor (MicroTiny, a small, streamlined version of

TinyMCE TinyMCE is an online rich-text editor released as open-source software under the MIT License. It has the ability to convert HTML text area fields or other HTML elements to editor instances. TinyMCE is designed to easily integrate with JavaScript l ...

Plugins: add-on modules

* Galleries *Member areas (password protected) *Company and User Directories * Guestbooks * Form Builders * Captchas * E-Commerce / shops * Calendars * Blogs * RSS *Custom module creators Numerous additional modules are available via the module repository or Module Manager

Themes

The internal template and stylesheet system allows for end-user theme creation, but others are available in a themes repository to download. Developers can choose the one that is closest to their wishes and customise further.

Support

Support for CMS Made Simple includes the content installed by default, built-in help, online docs, commercial/paid support, and a community. CMS Made Simple holds an annual meeting for its enthusiasts known as The Geek Moot where how-to seminars and Q&A discussions are held.

History and Awards

‘Best Open Source CMS’ Winner in th
CMS Critic 2017 Awards
'Peoples Choice Award' in the CMS Critic 2014 Awards. ‘Best Budget CMS - Critics Choice’ Nominee in the CMS Critic 2012 Awards. ‘Best Open Source CMS’ Winner in the Packt Publishing 2010 Awards. *Oct, 2009
Three Quarters of a Million Downloads Reached
* Aug, 2010
CMS Made Simple Reaches One Million Downloads