Building a Barebones Content Management System: An Introduction

Content Management Demystified

The term "content management" has a very important place in any web master’s dictionary and I am no exception. After all, visitors will only return to a website if they have a compelling reason to do so, and dynamically updated content provides one such reason. However, this would also mean that I have to manually update scores of HTML pages on a regular basis. This did not strike me as very pleasant at all, and I immediately began to explore various options to make my website dynamic.

Initially, the "techie" in me prompted me to dabble with different scripting languages such as Perl and PHP to build a custom application to drive my website. Unfortunately, it became a nightmare to maintain.

Next, I turned my attention to the growing number of "Content Management Systems" (or "CMS" as they are popularly known); in fact, several Open Source CMS software packages such as Typo3, Mambo, PHPNuke and others dot the PHP/Apache/MySQL landscape. A quick test run of these applications on the web server and my joy proved short-lived. I concluded that, while they were versatile, each came with its own set of quirks and shortcomings.

This is when the idea of a cobbling together a "barebones" CMS struck me -- one that gave me the flexibility that I yearned for while not sacrificing the advantages that such a system should provide. With these goals in mind, I began my search for the right tools -- after all, a carpenter is only as good as his tools. With a little help from the folks at Google, my quest ended with the discovery of several API packages that should make my job of developing a "barebones" CMS easy.

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