A CMS-based website hosted on the Orcon Genius?

Forums › 2degrees (including Slingshot, Orcon, Flip, Stuff Fibre, MyRepublic, 2talk and Vocus) › A CMS-based website hosted on the Orcon Genius?

Frittmann

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#96762 3-Feb-2012 18:10

I'm planning to set up an intranet site at home, as a noticeboard, photo album, library, and for other uses "in-house" at home. I intend to have the site hosted using the web server facility of my new Orcon Genius device. The problem is, I'm not an expert coder, so I tend to use a CMS with WYSIWYG tools to throw web pages together. My technophobic wife should also be able to add content to our intranet site, so WYSIWYG is definitely the best option.

The web server on the Genius does not have a database back end. I probably could throw up a MySQL database somewhere inside our home, but that adds extra network traffic on my already quite busy WLAN. Instead, what I was thinking of doing is using a database-less CMS system, such as Blue Sky Canvas. However, most such lightweight CMS packages I have come across rely on PHP, which the Genius web server also doesn't provide.

Can anyone recommend a lightweight CMS that requires neither a back-end database nor PHP, nor anything else that the Genius web server doesn't support? Sure, it's made to host the static postcard web sites from the 1980's, but I'm sure we can get something better out of it these days using technologies such as Java, Javascript, ASP, and other neat stuff that doesn't require additional back-end services. Suggestions anyone?

mattwnz

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#576962 3-Feb-2012 18:37

Frittmann: I'm planning to set up an intranet site at home, as a noticeboard, photo album, library, and for other uses "in-house" at home. I intend to have the site hosted using the web server facility of my new Orcon Genius device. The problem is, I'm not an expert coder, so I tend to use a CMS with WYSIWYG tools to throw web pages together. My technophobic wife should also be able to add content to our intranet site, so WYSIWYG is definitely the best option.

The web server on the Genius does not have a database back end. I probably could throw up a MySQL database somewhere inside our home, but that adds extra network traffic on my already quite busy WLAN. Instead, what I was thinking of doing is using a database-less CMS system, such as Blue Sky Canvas. However, most such lightweight CMS packages I have come across rely on PHP, which the Genius web server also doesn't provide.

Can anyone recommend a lightweight CMS that requires neither a back-end database nor PHP, nor anything else that the Genius web server doesn't support? Sure, it's made to host the static postcard web sites from the 1980's, but I'm sure we can get something better out of it these days using technologies such as Java, Javascript, ASP, and other neat stuff that doesn't require additional back-end services. Suggestions anyone?

Something like adobe 'contribute' for static html files.

But why not just buy some web hosting, will probably be cheaper and less hassle in the long run.

Frittmann

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#576968 3-Feb-2012 18:53

Thanks for the suggestions, mattwnz. However, from my precursory look at Adobe Contribute it looks like a web publishing application. No doubt it has a lot of bells and whistles, but if I was just wanting a web publishing app I would use Kompozer, Quanta+, or Bluefish Editor. I really don't want to design a site from scratch, including all the menus, admin controls, etc. I'd rather use a CMS like Joomla, Drupal, or Wordpress. However, the Genius cannot support such heavyweight CMSes.

As for hosting solutions, this is for my own in-house intranet at home, and I'd like to keep it in-house entirely. Sure, I could put up a MySQL or PostGRES server and an Apache server, as I have done in the past, and God knows I have enough spare hardware here to do that. But with the Genius I have a nice shiney new piece of hardware here that I'd like to push to its limits and see what it can do. I just need to find the right lightweight CMS that will run on it.

mattwnz

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#576973 3-Feb-2012 19:10

Frittmann: Thanks for the suggestions, mattwnz. However, from my precursory look at Adobe Contribute it looks like a web publishing application. No doubt it has a lot of bells and whistles, but if I was just wanting a web publishing app I would use Kompozer, Quanta+, or Bluefish Editor. I really don't want to design a site from scratch, including all the menus, admin controls, etc. I'd rather use a CMS like Joomla, Drupal, or Wordpress. However, the Genius cannot support such heavyweight CMSes.

As for hosting solutions, this is for my own in-house intranet at home, and I'd like to keep it in-house entirely. Sure, I could put up a MySQL or PostGRES server and an Apache server, as I have done in the past, and God knows I have enough spare hardware here to do that. But with the Genius I have a nice shiney new piece of hardware here that I'd like to push to its limits and see what it can do. I just need to find the right lightweight CMS that will run on it.

I think there are php ones that don't use mysql, but instead use a flat text file instead. But don't know of any that are not php based.

Frittmann

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#576997 3-Feb-2012 20:14

mattwnz: I think there are php ones that don't use mysql, but instead use a flat text file instead. But don't know of any that are not php based.

Yes, that is what I'm looking for. I'm hoping that someone here can suggest one that relies on neither a database back-end nor PHP. I've been looking, believe me, but as yet I haven't found anything. I'm hoping someone here can suggest one that they have used before that will do the trick.

kingjj

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#577044 3-Feb-2012 22:12

Have you had a look around hotscripts.com? There are literally thousands of scripts listed there, many free. A quick look under ajax/javascripts shows there are potentials...

I'll be following this project with interest so please keeps us updated on your results.

Zeon

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#577050 3-Feb-2012 22:31

Oh, will be interesting to see how it performs!

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mattwnz

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#577052 3-Feb-2012 22:35

kingjj: Have you had a look around hotscripts.com? There are literally thousands of scripts listed there, many free. A quick look under ajax/javascripts shows there are potentials...

I'll be following this project with?interest?so please keeps us updated on your results.

Yes hotscripts is probably the place to look. There may even be something flash based, but that may be a bit complex.

freitasm

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#577058 3-Feb-2012 22:52

You are looking for something like TiddlyWiki...

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Frittmann

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#577088 4-Feb-2012 01:29

Thanks for suggesting HotScripts, kingjj and mattwnz. I will definitely be having a good look through there for some add-in functionality for my site later, but I don't want to write the website myself, even if I can just cobble together bits and pieces of pre-written code. The suggestion from Mauricio looks better for my purposes. Thanks for that. I'll start playing with it now. The example sites using TiddlyWiki look great, and the fact that it can also be run from removable storage without even needing a web server is a huge bonus. Thanks for the suggestion!

EDIT: Okay, I have had a look at TiddyWiki and some of its offshoots, such as TiddlyBlog and I am intrigued, but I don't think it is quite what I'm looking for. The problem with it is that it isn't local. All the images, for the templates, etc, are hosted on the web, not with the html documents. If my connection to the outside world ever goes down, I expect my home intranet site to still be visible and to look the same as normal. It should not be reliant on external resources.

TidlyWiki reminds me of those competitions they used to have in the 1980's, to design a web page using only Windows Notepad and a whole heap of hot-linking. I'm morally averse to hot-linking unless it is explicitly allowed, such as it appears to be for TiddlyWiki. However, it still wouldn't be appropriate for my home intranet site and I can't be bothered downloading the images and re-coding all the img tags to force TiddlyWiki to stay within the confines of my home network. Other than that, I will no doubt use TiddlyWiki for other projects. Thanks!

I may end up having to create this home intranet site from scratch, using a web design app and some drop-in code from places like HotScripts. Any other suggestions before I go and bury myself in layers of Javascript and HTML tags? :-)

Frittmann

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#577183 4-Feb-2012 12:52

Wow! Looks like I was too hasty in dismissing TiddlyWiki.

I thought I'd have a look behind the scenes at the code for it, to see how hard it would actually be to convert all the hot-links for the images to point to local files on my hard drive. Guess what? There aren't any! The images used in the default theme for TiddlyBlog are all base64 text-encoded right inside the file. Awesome!

I'll definitely be using TiddlyWiki for this project. Again, thanks everybody who offered suggestions. I'm off to learn more about TiddlyWiki and TiddlyTools.

*shuffles off*