All websites require their content to showcase in a very professional manner. Since it is very hard for a single person or team to do it by himself/herself, they look for help in designing and maintaining the websites. This is where the importance of CMS systems props up. These systems not only help in creating a good website but also help in managing and updating the website.
For this roundup we have compiled a list of 12 Useful Flat CMS to setup Websites, few of the following CMS contain a Markdown editor that can render your .md files into web pages.
Some of them also feature a visual editor with WYSIWYG features as well as user and role management. Enjoy !!
1. Redaxscript
Redaxscript is a modern, ultra lightweight and rocket fast Content Management System for SQLite, MySQL and PostgreSQL. You can write your modules and templates, includes console interface for executing commands from the terminal or straight from the browser, automate your installations, backups, imports and other tasks. Also includes object relational mapper and fluent query builder which provide a standardised abstraction layer for SQLite, MySQL and postgreSQL databases.
You can create different users and groups with permissions according to their desired role. Limit access to content and modules to certain groups. Redaxscript also includes smart caching that keep pages balances high server loads to deliver your website in a timely manner.
2. Pico
Pico is a stupidly simple & blazing fast, flat file CMS. Picos makes creating and maintaining a website as simple as editing text files. Pico is a “flat file” CMS, meaning no database woe’s, no MySQL queries, nothing. It is seriously lightweight and doesn’t use a database, making it super fast. You can edit your website in your favourite text editor using simple Markdown formatting. Pico uses the Twig templating engine, for powerful and flexible themes. Best of all, Pico is completely free and open source, released under the MIT license.
3. Pagekit
Pagekit is a modular and lightweight CMS built with modern technologies like Symfony components and Doctrine. It provides an awesome platform for theme and extension developers. Pagekit gives you the tools to create beautiful websites. No matter if it’s a simple blog, your company’s website or a web service. Pagekit is published for free under the MIT license. You are free to modify, share and redistribute it without any limitations. It is up to you how you want to license your themes and extensions. Use the MIT, GPL or any other license. This gives you as a developer real freedom.
4. Anchor
Anchor is a super-simple, lightweight blog system, made to let you just write. Anchor weighs in smaller than a standard JPG image (~150kb). Anchor gives you full freedom over your words. Just write in Markdown or HTML, whatever you prefer. If you want to add some custom CSS, JavaScript, or an image to your post, you can simply drag the file over to Anchor.
5. Dropplets
Dropplets is a minimalist Markdown blogging platform focused on delivering just what you need in a blogging solution. When it comes to basic blogging, all you really want to do is write & publish which is where Dropplets excels. Dropplets is a fresh platform dedicated to making blogging simple. With no database, you can install Dropplets in seconds on any server, compose offline using markdown, then simply upload to publish. You can install it on any server in just about 30 seconds.
6. Kirby
Kirby lets you write content in Markdown format by default, but there are visual markdown editor plugins to make writing fun. Kirby’s highly flexible API is very easy to learn and will boost your productivity while you can focus on building high-quality websites for your clients. Kirby is file-based – No database involved. This means first class performance, version controllable content, simple backups and many other awesome sideeffects.
7. Koken
Koken is a free system designed for photographers, designers, and creative DIYs to publish independent web sites of their work.
Koken is built to offer photographers, designers and artists a different kind of publishing platform. One that is focused primarily on images, can be used on your own web server, and offers robust publishing tools for web sites as original and unique as the artist themselves.
8. Fork
Fork CMS is dedicated to creating a user friendly environment to build, monitor and update your website. It is jam-packed with cool apps. It’s comes with the territory of being a kick-ass Content Management System. They have also a wide collection of beautiful themes build by talented designers. With Fork CMS, being a marketing guru is super easy. It also plays nicely with excising services like Campaign Monitor and Google Analytics.
9. Automad
Automad is a file-based flat CMS and template engine. It is designed to be fully portable without any dependencies on databases or fixed locations and doesn’t require any complicated setup process. All data gets stored in a human readable form. A two step caching system makes your site extremely fast. A web-based user interface makes it easy – even for beginners – to manage a website. The template engine enables designers to build custom themes and templates without PHP knowledge. The extension interface allows developers to create plugins for all kind of functionality. Deployment and backup is not more than copying the Automad directory. It is also possible to put a whole site under version control using Git or Mercurial.
10. WonderCMS
WonderCMS is the smallest CMS in the world (their claim). Its size is quite small (just 15kb on 7 files) yet it shas cool feature such as editing content in place. You can grab themes, and get plugins to add features to your site such as adding a gallery and a WYSIWYG editor.
11. Monstra
Monstra is a fast, extensible, modern CMS that’s flexible and easy to use. It has Twitter Bootstrap built-in for the front-end framework, is multi-user friendly, and it’s database-free. Monstra uses best frontend and backend optimization practice. Monstra minify html, css, js files to Reduce Payload Size. Also combine css and js files to Reduce HTTP Round-Trips.
12. Nibbleblog
Nibbleblog uses a one-step installation wizard. All you need to do is fill in your information and you can login to the dashboard to do everything form creating a blog post or page to setting site preferences.
