[lug] CMS Recommendation?

Jed S. Baer blug at jbaer.cotse.net
Tue Jan 10 14:02:05 MST 2017


Hi Folks.

I inherited the responsibility for maintaining a small website for a
local ham radio club, and the "website builder" interface provided by the
hosting company is the worst thing I've ever encountered for such a task.
So, having past experience with WordPress, I figured I'd convert the site
to that. So, I set up an instance locally, to work on that. Wow.

The WordPress of today is a far cry from that of my previous experience.
It's become a bloated mess of JavaScript and quirky templates. (YMMV,
JMHO, etc.) The generated pages do not display properly unless JavaScript
is enabled. This breaks my rule of displaying content using the simplest
method available. And it's an unwelcome surprise, since I regularly read
quite a few sites which are published using WordPress, without need of
JavaScript. I can only conclude that these sites are using older
templates, which are fortunately still compatible with newer releases of
WordPress. Okay, I'll cut short the rant. :)

So, I'm looking for some other CMS / web publishing method. It should be
lightweight, with simple, easily tweakable templating, and produce
uncomplicated HTML. Mostly, for this site, I need static pages and the
ability to group/organize images and technical documents. Possibly, a
blog feature could be used in the future, but that's not a high
requirement. The admin/management part needs to be part of the website.
Once the initial install/setup is finished, it should be easy to make
content additions/changes. It should support multiple user accounts.

I've looked over the listings at
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_content_management_systems

cmsimple would seem, by dint of its name, to be simple - can anyone
comment on it?

I'm open for suggestions. One of the challenges here is that if I drop
dead, the job of maintaining the site will likely fall on someone who
isn't as knowledgable as I. This rules out some things which seem cool,
such as OctoPress, or other solutions where content is generated locally
and uploaded.

TIA for any advice.
jed


More information about the LUG mailing list