“Open Sourcing” my CMS Idea

    About a year ago I decided that I didn’t like any of the content management options out there, and I wanted to create my own. As a designer I was looking for a system where I could handle more complicated content without getting my hands too dirty in programming.

    Not being a programmer myself I just started concepting around how I wanted it to work and function, and eventually came up with an initial idea. It ended up taking inspiration from both Frog and WordPress. I showed it to a few programmer buddies, but when we considered the whole gambit of competing CMS’s, we decided there wasn’t a market, nor a need for another one.

    The idea has sat dormant for awhile now, and as I was digging around cleaning up my web server tonight I ran into it again and thought I’d share it with the world.

    I gave it an initial name, Flext. You can check out some screens from the beginnings of Flext CMS if you want.

    Here’s the rundown of what some of the terminology means, I’ll admit that some of it got a little confusing:

    Pages: Groupings of content in a hierarchical order.
    Components: A way to define what kinds/types of content the CMS should ask for. Including what it should be called, how it should be entered, and how it should be formatted.
    Filters: A way to look through multiple pages and pull certain types of content into a separate page.
    Blocks: Groupings of content separated from the normal hierarchy of pages.
    Code: Or “Code Blocks” would be PHP code that could be added anywhere in the layout.
    Templates: CSS and XHTML layouts that define how pages will look to the viewers of the website.
    Regions: Areas that are defined within templates to store blocks or page content.
    Modules: Additional bits of programming that can add specific functionality to the CMS.

    Feel free to diss it, ask any questions, steal the idea, whatever. Its now open sourced. =)

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