CMS for mini-sites?

[devolution]

Anyone know a good simple CMS with lots of templates which can be used for multiple mini sites. (In directories on the same server - not requiring an individual install of the CMS script for each site).
I was thinking of writing my own system myself but don't have the time...

Something like the InstantSite at 123-reg.co.uk would be ideal - fast and simple and some pretty flashy templates...

 

[tifosi]

try snewscms.com. Lightweight & with templates. May be suitable.

S

 

[narkis]

Check this site http://www.opensourcecms.com/, there are demos of all the popular CMS, try and choose.

 

[Joe Davison]

Definitely look at Wordpress...

 

[raymond]

Wordpress for sure...

 

[redtruck]

I was looking into this recently and came to the conclusion that I have more control and greater flexibility without a CMS. You can run multiple sites from a single Wordpress install, but that's not what it was designed for, and it's a bit of a hack.

I use RapidWeaver running on a Mac to develop sites. Lots of free templates, but also the flexibility to expand where ever you want to go if a site happens to take off. If I where you, I'd stick to a solution that runs off your PC or Mac.

 

[bizservices]

For your mini-site, I recommend wordpress. Easy to use and lots of templates to choose from.

 

[denchomsky]

For your mini-site, I recommend wordpress. Easy to use and lots of templates to choose from.

I dont think people realise that wordpress is not really suitable for multiple minisites, for each site you have to run the complete application which is very bandwidth intensive, and any profits you might make from your minisites could very easily be sucked up with hosting costs.

Fundamentaly minisites are 1-3 page lightweight static websites with some text, images and adverts, Wordpress is is a blogging application with alot of functionality not needed for a minisite unless it is actually a blog that you need.

Wordpress is great for a one off minisite, and relatively easy to create half decent pages, but for a multiple minisite solution it is not ideal.

 

[retired_member21]

I agree with denchomsky. Probably something with under 20 files altogether (including images etc), running on a flat file backend (DBs are a pain to setup and not really required on this kind of scale)

Will have a look into it

 

[pianolessons]

real open source CMS

at sourceforge.net you can find PHP nuke. The best full featured CMS on the market.

 

[tifosi]

at sourceforge.net you can find PHP nuke. The best full featured CMS on the market.

You're joking?? It's the biggest pile of spaghetti code on the web! 'deprecated' is it's middle name... Good in it's day, but that was at the start of php4. Just doesn't cut it any more.

S

 

[rob]

Hes another junk user on here to get links back to his site.... mods!

 

[charlie]

I've been trying to do this for a while now - just dont have the resources or time to think about the entire solution - named spaces for content, adverts, banners, feeds etc with single DB and shared media . . . oh and not using PHP!
so far no luck have normally reverted to standalone setups

 

[stevebrowne]

I have a custom cms, with web service product feeds, forum areas, link pages, article pages etc. Nothing I could give to anyone else though (no admin pages, and I know my way around the DB), unless a big portfolio owner would want to fund me...

eg toylocator // co // uk or lcdframe // co // uk

Each site is at the very basic a line in the database. Some feature have other data in the database as well.

Just not enough time to keep content flowing...