The Internet has a huge number of websites but still there might be scope for a successful local news website or a site about the local cinema or theatre. If your website idea is stuck due to lack of adequate technical know-how and funds, here's how you can create one with just hosting space on a PHP-enabled Web server. Doing away with the need for a database such as MySQL will help you reduce cost by more than half as a few hundred MB of space (that should be sufficient for a start-up website) is far cheaper than that with a database.

What is a CMS?

Any regularly updated website such as a news site uses a Content Management System, or CMS, for creating and managing content. A CMS makes the process of creating and managing content on a website simple by automating the process. It is a must for any website that wants to add conetent frequently.

There is a huge number of CMSes, both open source and free as well as paid, available on the Web, almost all of them rely on PHP and MySQL database. Some good free CMSes include Joomla, Expression Engine and Text Pattern.

What is PHP and MySQL?

PHP, or Hypertext Preprocessor, is a server side scripting language that is used for processing requests and serving websites. Every Web hosting provider shoould have PHP enabled on your web space by default.

My SQL is a database for storing content, of course. Web hosting providers will charge you extra for a database.

If all CMSes require both PHP and MySQL, how can we have a CMS-enabled website without a MySQL database?

GetSimple CMS

Yeah! GetSimple, a CMS that can be installed on any Unix/Linux-based Web server with Apache and PHP. (Don't worry about the terms. All Linux Web server will have both of them.) It requires just a few minutes to get your CMS ready for your website.

How to install GetSimple CMS

Before installing the CMS, you will need to buy a domain name (Web address such as www.mydomain.com) and hosting space. You will also need to point your domain name to your Web space. If you buy both domain name and web space from one provider, you will not have to worry about pointing your domain to your web server. There are plenty of options for buying domain names and web hosting. Choose a reliable local hosting provider or any international host of repute. After you have got your domain and web space ready, follow these steps:

1. Download GetSimple.
2. Unzip the content to find a GetSimple_x.xx folder.
3. Now use an FTP client such as FileZilla to upload the contents of this folder to the root (main or top) folder of your web space (or to a subfolder where you you want to locate the CMS website). (Your web host will provide you with the details and password for FTP access to your website space.)
4. Make sure that you have read and write permissions for your folders, particularly the folder /data/ which will store and serve the content of your website. Use the tools or ask your web hosting provider to set the folder CHMOD to 775 or a+rw. CHMOD
5. 775 or a+rw allows you to read as well as save files in the folder.
6. Now use a Web browser to type the URL of your website if you have uploaded the content in the main folder. If you have uploaded the content to a subfolder, type http://mydomain.com/subfolder in the web browser.
7. An installation screen will appear. Fill it to claim your website.
8. Change the password after you sign in with the system generated password.
9. Go to Support > Website Health check to know the status of your CMS website.
10. Now go to Settings page and set your time zone. Also, tick the "Use Fancy URLs" option to get pretty URLs like http://mydomain.com/my-popular-article instead of something like http://mydomain.com/index.php?get=my-popular-article. If mod_rewrite has not been enabled for your web space, you will have to get that done for using pretty URLs.

How to create content in GetSimple?

For creating new content, go to Pages > Create New Page. You will get an HTML editor for adding content.

The HTML page editor does not have functionality to add images and other media. For this you need to go to Files > Add Files and/or Images. Copy the URL to the image or a thumbnail or the file for use while creating content in pages tab.



Use Page Options at the top of page HTML editor to set the URL/Slug of the post, add tags, add meta descriptions to be used by search engines such as Yahoo! and Goolge, make it a child page of some main page, use a particular template for the page and to add the page to the website navigation bar.

If you want to publish the content later, check the Keep Private option.

How to customize GetSimple website design?

GetSimple has a few themes made available by GetSimple as well as on its support forum by its community. Download the themes, unzip them and upload them to the theme folder in your GetSimple installation on the Web. Now go to the Themes page and activate the desired theme. If you have some understanding of PHP and CSS, you can use the GetSimple Documentation page to learn how to create GetSimple template.

Limitations of GetSimple

GetSimple does not have a dynamic sidebar where you can show latest posts, comments, etc. All of it will have to be inserted manually using plain text and or HTML. Though it lacks sophistication, but that shouldn't be counted as a drawback since it has been created to be that way, simple.

Download GetSimple CMS