An all singing and all dancing CMS (who uses all of there features anyway?) is not always the best option for every web design project, sometimes all you need is something with a little less punch, something with a smaller learning curve and something that is really, really light.
All of the CMSes below can be regarded as ‘light’, that’s not to say they are lightweights, but what they are is a simpler system, for you and your clients, to manage content.
And best of all? All of these CMSes are open-source.
Frog CMS
Frog CMS simplifies content management by offering an elegant user interface, flexible templating per page, simple user management and permissions, as well as the tools necessary for file management.
Frog is unique because of its simple templating code. Because it uses PHP directly, there is no need to learn yet another scripting language.
Frog requires PHP5, a MySQL database or SQLite 3 with PDO, and a web server (Apache with mod_rewrite is highly recommended). It is distributed under the GNU General Public License version 3.
Frog CMS Homepage – Documentation
Frog CMS Admin Screenshot
GetSimple CMS
GetSimple is an open source CMS that is loaded it with features that every website needs, but with nothing it doesn't. It utilizes the speed and convenience of XML, a best-in-class UI and with one of the easiest learning curve of any simple CMS out there.
GetSimple is an open-source project licensed under the GNU GENERAL PUBLIC LICENSE.
GetSimple CMS Homepage – Documentation
GetSimple Admin Screenshot
Stacey
Stacey is a very very lightweight content management system. It needs no database setup or installation files, simply drop the application on a server and it runs. The content is managed by creating folders and editing text files, so, no login screens, nor is there an admin interface.
Stacey stores all of its content using flat text files & folders rather than a traditional database. So installation is as simple as copying the application files onto your server. No install file, no database setup and it will run on any standard php server.
Stacey Homepage – Documentation
Stacey Admin Screenshot
Symphony
Symphony leverages open standards like XML and XSLT, and good old XHTML and CSS. Even the admin interface employs the widely-used jQuery library, so extension developers don’t have to learn a whole new framework when extending the back end.
Symphony is open source software, adopting the ultra-permissive MIT/X11 license.
Symphony Homepage – Documentation
Symphony Admin Screenshot
Pixie
Pixie is not out to compete with any other site management tool, there main goal is to keep Pixie so simple that even your Grandma could use it!
It uses the latest web standards so whatever site you build, it's accessible to all your visitors and is search engine friendly and you will love the fact that all you need to know is CSS to customise your site.
Pixie has been released under the GNU General Public License v3.
Pixie Homepage – Documentation
Pixie Admin Screenshot
Radiant CMS
Radiant is an open source CMS designed for small teams that has been built from the ground up to be as simple as possible, featuring an elegant administrative interface that centers around three key components: pages, snippets, and layouts.
It has a special macro language (similar to HTML) called Radius which makes it easy to include content from other pages, iterate over page children, and display content conditionally.
Radiant CMS Homepage – Documentation (via GitHub)”>
Radiant Admin Screenshot
SkyBlueCanvas
SkyBlueCanvas Lightweight CMS is an open source, free content management system written in php and built specifically for small web sites. It has been custom-built for those instances when more robust systems like Joomla, WordPress and Drupal are too much horsepower.
SkyBlueCanvas includes a lot of the same basic abilities as more robust systems but in a simpler form. The software is not meant to be all things to all users but it does offer features you expect like a familiar Plugin API, Extensibility and skinnability.
SkyBlueCanvas Homepage – Documentation
SkyBlueCanvas Admin Screenshot
sNews
sNews is a completely free, standards compliant, PHP and MySQL driven Content Management System. It is extremely lightweight, simple and customizable. It's easy to install, and easy to use via a simple web interface. sNews consists of only one core engine file, one independent template file and its accompanying CSS stylesheet file, plus an .htaccess file that makes all URLs search engine friendly.
sNews Homepage – Documentation
sNews Admin Screenshot
Zotonic
Zotonic is a fast, easy to use and open source CMS. Its extensible, flexible and has been built from the ground up with rich internet applications and web publishing in mind.
It can also work as a framework that is easy to extend and adapt for your specific use.
Zotonic is released under the Open Source Apache2 license, which gives you the possibility to use it and modify it in every circumstance.
Zotonic Homepage – Documentation
Zotonic Admin Screenshot
CushyCMS
CushyCMS is a Content Management Systems (CMS) that is truly simple. It's free for unlimited users, unlimited changes, unlimited pages and unlimited sites.
It's built from the ground up with ease of use in mind – for both content editors and designers. It's such a simple CMS that it takes less than 3 minutes for a web designer to implement. No PHP or ASP required for this CMS. If you can add CSS classes to HTML tags then you can implement CushyCMS. It's also a hosted CMS, so no installation or maintenance is needed either.
CushyCMS Homepage
CMS Made Simple
CMS Made Simple is an open source ( GPL) package, built using PHP that provides website developers with a simple, easy to use utility to allow building small-ish (dozens to hundreds of pages), semi-static websites.
CMS Made Simple Homepage – Documentation
PageLime
PageLime is a hosted Content Management System (CMS) for designers, web agencies, and web developers. It allows you to manage text, images, and documents on your site by logging into a web-app that's hosted on our servers. The best part is that it doesn't matter where your site is hosted, it doesn't matter whether you use PHP, Java, or ASP (or no scripting platform), and you don't have to make a single change to your site architecture.
It is free to use for up to three registered sites, for anything more it costs $19 (50 sites) and $69 (unlimited sites)
PageLime Homepage – Documentation
PageLime Admin Screenshot
CMS from Scratch
CMS from Scratch is a quick, easy, and open-source solution that lets web designers give their customers a web site they can edit themselves.
With CMS from Scratch you can turn a flat HTML page into one that your client can update in minutes – with absouletly no database or programming knowledge. It has been designed to let you chop up existing pages, or templates, saving chunks as includes, which the Editor may edit, without being able to mess up core markup. Some includes will only appear on one page, whereas others may be re-used on several pages. CMS from Scratch makes it easy to create all kinds of includes.
CMS from Scratch Homepage – Documentation
Zimplit CMS
Zimplit is extremely lightweight, simple, customizable and open-source. It's very easy to install, and easy to use via a simple web interface and it consists of only one core engine file.
It has no admin area, all you have to do is log in and you can live edit on-site. Simple as that!
Zimplit CMS Homepage – Documentation
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19 Jul, 2010
that snews cms very awesome only one files and can built great cms system,
thanks for the others
19 Jul, 2010
I LOVE sNews. You can run it on one template, but it has enough styling hooks so that the fact of just having one template doesn’t limit you.
19 Jul, 2010
check the title, i guess you mean “easy to use” not “east to use”.
nice article though, some of these CMS were new to me
19 Jul, 2010
Yeah, thanks for the heads up, its all fixed now. Thanks.
19 Jul, 2010
Actually I think FrogCMS is no longer active and there is a fork called WolfCMS which is exactly like Frog but active, developed by some guys from FrogCMS.
19 Jul, 2010
Another CMS to consider:
Perch : http://grabaperch.com/
19 Jul, 2010
I didn’t think Perch was open-source.
19 Jul, 2010
No, Perch is not open source. Quite deliberately so.
Whilst open source is great (and we’ve contributed to and started open source projects ourselves) a low cost commercial license means that we’re able to offer great user support and long term commitment to the development of the product.
There’s already an example in this article of an open source CMS that has stalled and died. That’s bad for designers, and even worse for their customers. Having a small license fee means that people are being paid to keep working on and supporting Perch.
You can hit lucky and get those things with open source software, for sure. There are great examples of projects that mature to that level (such as WordPress) but they are few and far between. The chance of committing to working with an open source CMS and then having that project stall a die is a real risk that needs to be weighed up against the cost of the license for a commercial, well supported product.
That’s just my take on it!
Drew – from Perch.
19 Jul, 2010
I would add Textpattern CMS as a light and simple prototyping tool.
19 Jul, 2010
Great list! thanks
19 Jul, 2010
I wouldn’t necessarily consider CMS Made Simple “light,” although it’s one of my favorite CMSs. Consider also Concrete 5 (http://www.concrete5.org). I reviewed it just this weekend here: http://pixelita.com/1090/concrete-5-cms-a-solid-review/
19 Jul, 2010
@SueJ .. Is Perch open source?! I didn’t think it was. This article concerns *open source* CMS systems.
19 Jul, 2010
@Freelance Web Design you are correct on that. I use Wolf CMS for all of my websites, love it’s light weight and easy installation!
19 Jul, 2010
Thanks for the list, my favorite is Pulse CMS
http://pulsecms.com/
19 Jul, 2010
Really good list. I also think Textpattern should be in the list.
I want to suggest another very interesting OpenSource CMS: habariproject.org
19 Jul, 2010
Hey Thanks great list
19 Jul, 2010
twit this gadget is not working properly, gave 404 error on short url generated by it.
22 Jul, 2010
great list! i would add silverstripe (my favorite) as a flexible and powerful cms.
22 Aug, 2010
Thanks for the list, still trying different CMS’s at the moment.
24 Aug, 2010
this is a great list, thanks.
26 Aug, 2010
Very nice selection of compact CMS. LT