la.plume CMS Info
About la.plume micro CMS
My name is Patrick Taylor. I've been building websites since 1998. This is a rough explanation of why I wrote this micro CMS.
I wrote la.plume to be as simple as it can possibly be. The pages load in a blink as there's no database to plough through. When a page is requested, the server goes straight to the resource: one text file containing the page content and one php file to format the HTML markup.
Simplicity for intellectual satisfaction
"Less is more" is never so true as on the web. And "think more about less" is an interesting discipline. For instance, when the title of a web page is exactly the same as its H1 heading, and when its filename is exactly the same as the text that links to it in the navigation menu, a harmony is achieved which can benefit the performance of the page in search rankings as well as clarity for the user.
Structural simplicity imposes a useful discipline too. The decision as to whether a link to a page appears in the main navigation menu, or only in a sub-menu on a particular page (or subset of pages), or only within the text of one page, is an important one in prioritising content. The HTML markup comprises just three structural 'divs': wrap (a containing "wrapper"), content, and menu (+ comments if commenting is enabled).
Often, the freedom to avoid much 'thinking' when developing a website can lead to confusion, or even mistakes from which it can be difficult to recover. Or conversely, when the result of careful thought over the simple things is something that performs better than something more complex and fully-featured, there's a certain satisfaction. It's the same kind of satisfaction one gains from having enjoyed a well-planned and perfect backpacking holiday when an easy alternative would have been an expensive cruise with all its wastage and superfluous luxuries.
I've made this featherweight micro CMS purely for my own satisfaction, but anyone is welcome to use it. It can be downloaded free from the home page »
Additional notes
The CMS character set is UTF-8. There's a test page containing French, German, and Swedish characters, and other bits and pieces, validating as XHTML 1.0 Transitional.
Also version 5.1 test install (out of the box).
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Comments
Hi Patrick
Looks great. Just going to install it now locally with XAMPP. One question, can I use any generic template on the web and adapt it to la.plume? That would be so great! I'm always looking for the simplest cms that can use generic templates, and like you I do get frustrated with always upgrading to new versions of other CMSs, especially for security problems.
In theory you can adapt the page structure to a different set of divs (etc) but you would need to edit page.class.php. It probably isn't worth it as there is a single column of content either way. Better to retain the current structure and work with the stylesheet if you want a different design.
Patrick
OK,thanks. I just like to have my page 100% of the browser width. Is there a simple change I can make to do that alone?
I'm thinking of trying your other cms too, le.cms. Can explain the difference between the two? Thanks.
I haven't actually tried it but you'd need to edit the stylesheet along the lines of:
(1) Remove the body background image.
(2) Change #wrap width from 870 pixels to 100%.
(3) Change #content width from 540 pixels to 100%.
If you are familiar with CSS (cascading stylesheets) it should be quite simple to do. If you get into a mess, click "Get default styles" then "Edit styles" which will restore the default.
le.cms gives more control over the menu and has additional features but I have not maintained it for a while. For reliable simplicity, la.plume is better.
Patrick
You also need to edit #menu in the stylesheet. As a quick test I removed background images and set #wrap to 100%, #content to 75% and #menu as follows:
#menu {
margin-left: 80%;
width: 20%;
padding: 8px 0 0 0;
}
It gives a decent width for content and positions the menu at top right.
Paul