NEW! Version 2.0 with built-in rich HTML editor is available! Scroll down to download it!

LIL' CMS 1.0

Thanks for stopping by. Lil' CMS is the simplest CMS that has been written ever: it takes only a few minutes to setup and use, requires only a little knowledge of FTP and HTML on webmaster's end and doesn't require any FTP or HTML knowledge on user's part.

This CMS basically allows an user to change text on web pages only! If you were looking for more than that, Lil' CMS isn't for you!

Why anyone would need such a simple content management system (I hear you say ;)? We think that many web designers will find it useful. Web 2.0 and all that modern stuff ;) aside, at the end of the day the majority of web sites still have only a couple of static pages (Home, About Us, Our Products and Contact Us ;) and update once-twice a year. Joomla (the most popular CMS at the moment) and such are great, but it takes more time to install and set them up than to design an average static 4-5 pages web site.

In our opinion it doesn't make sense to use powerful CMS if your clients only need to change prices or add a few lines of text on their web site from time to time. Lil' CMS is easy to integrate with any web page and as long your clients can handle a web browser, they will be able to handle our CMS too.

Installation & Setup

First click here to download Lil' CMS. It's only 2 kb :) All that you'll find inside the archive are lilcms.php (CMS itself) and readme file.

Before everything, you need to know that pages with editable text need to be either PHP or SHTML. As for PHP any version would do and as for SHTML (extension that implicates that your web page uses server side includes), what you'll do is really basic and should work with literally any web host.

We recommend you first try with PHP extension. There're many handy php snippets around and you may want to use them with your site later -- in that case you will not need to change anything. In both cases (php or shtml) you will not need to insert any special code in order for them to work - any html page will work just fine if you rename it to .php or .shtml, these extensions are only notice for server that dynamic code is maybe inside.

On to the installation. Create the following folders in the root (that's where your html/php/etc pages are) of your web site:

backup
content
cms

Now open Notepad (or such ;) and create text documents with content that will be editable. For example:

introduction.txt
news.txt
footer_text.txt

Put them all in the content folder. Set their file permissions to 777 (this is very easy, every FTP client features Change Attributes command).
Set file permission of folder "backup" to 777 too.

Upload lilcms.php to folder cms. You can change its filename to whatever you like. You can change folder's name to whatever you like. It's completely ok if you access Lil' CMS through address kind of www.mysite.com/cms9403KLC402/siteedit.php

You can also change location of text files if you like, just edit lilcms.php, it's right there in the second line.

We're almost there. Now go to locations of the web page(s) where you want editable text and insert the following piece of code:

If you renamed your web pages to SHTML:
<!--#include virtual="content/somefile.txt" -->

If you renamed your web pages to PHP:
<? include('content/somefile.txt') ?>

... and of course rename somefile.txt to introduction.txt or news.txt or whatever you came up with.

That'd be all.

CMS Usage

Go to location of the cms, for example www.mysite.com/cms/lilcms.php

You'll get a window like this:

In left column click on the file that you want to edit, then click on button Load. The file will open in the editor on the right:

Before you edit a file it's wise to make a backup. Click on the button Backup and backup file will be created in the backup directory.

When you're done with editing, click on the button Update.
If you did something wrong, and if you backed up a file, click on Restore to revert the latest version.

That'd be all :)

LIL' CMS 2.0

This version uses Tiny MCE instead of a simple text editor. This is major improvement -- click here to download it and see for yourself. The rest is the same!

For any questions please write to support at lilcms dot com.