Intro
I’ve been looking at GetSimple CMS lately. It allows you to do some basic things so in that sense it’s pretty good.
The details
I know nothing about CMSes, except maybe a tiny bit about WordPress since I use it, but only in a really basic way. I like the idea of a simple CMS however – one that is simple to install and doesn’t even require a database, so this fit the bill.
First problem
My first attempts to use it met with failure. I could create new pages but when I saved them the characters I had typed into the pages were lost, just emptied out. I even went so far as to identify the XML file where these pages are stored and look at the raw xml files. The CDATA that should have contained my typing was blank! At first I was convinced that my version of php was to blame. But I tried different version, 5.3.3, 5.3.17. I still got the problem. So finally I decided that it had to be the fact that I compile my own apache and use somewhat different configuration compared to system defaults. So I switched to a system-supplied apache web server and sure enough, it began to work. Although I would like to believe it’s really something in my configuration, I couldn’t find such a thing and gave up trying. For the record the pages are stored here: <htdocs>/data/pages/<page-name>.xml
Security aspect
I would say this CMS is vulnerable to brute-force attacks. I suggest to randomize the location of the admin login by using the GST-adminlock plugin. You want to have multiple users? The version I used, 3.3.8 accommodates that! It needs just a little fudging to get going. Tie authentication to a back-end database? I doubt that is possible. i did check and it does store the login passwords encrypted. Not sure if there is salt added or not…
Plugins
I’m especially bad at evaluating plugins. I guess there should be better themes out there because the system-supplied one is so basic. It’s strange that you have to manually get the downloaded plugin onto the server with sftp or some similar tool. Unless I’m missing something, which I probably am.
Conclusion
GetSimple CMS may be good for a 15 – 20 page simple site. It doesn’t need a back-end database, doing all that sort of thing through use of PHP’s XML capabilities. Quite a few plugins exist which extend its functionality. The available documentation is pretty good. Security is adequate and should be made better by the person implementing it. The last thing we need is another way for the bad guys to take over legitimate web sites and inject malicious content.
References and related
Getsimple CMS info is here: http://get-simple.info/
I mentioned compiling my own apache. Usually it all works out for me, but not for use with GetSimple CMS. anyway, here is how I compiled a recent version of apache 2.4.