FolderCMS is the no-fuss way to be the master of your own website.
Simple PHP utility that turns any hand-crafted web page into a multi-page website with navigable content.
Websites coded from scratch in HTML and CSS are simple, efficient to load, and can help break the monotony of generic websites.
Effortless to manage compared to more bulky CMS systems like Wordpress. No SQL database required.
Less than 20 kilobytes, and this website runs on it.
Simply primitive
In a world of overcomplicated website systems that are difficult to administer and resource-heavy, FolderCMS is simply primitive.
If you want to set up your own website with structured content across multiple pages, but don't want the ordeal of managing an elaborate content mananagement system (CMS) or administering the database backends that these systems require, FolderCMS might be for you.
FolderCMS doesn't store content in an SQL database, which can be tricky to untangle when things go wrong. Instead, you do this:
How to use it
Build your web page
Make sure your web host or personal web server has PHP available.
Build an ordinary web page in HTML and CSS, with placeholders for where you want menus and body content to appear. This would normally be named index.php
Put the foldercms.php file onto your web host too, and create a content directory for the content that will differ between different pages on your site.
For security, these needn't be located in a publicly navigable part of your website. Add code to your index.php file to include the FolderCMS code when your site loads.
Insert PHP script into your HTML in the appropriate parts of your webpage to indicate where you want the main menu, submenus, title, content, etc. to appear.
Style the navigation menus further using ordinary CSS.
When a user's browser requests a page on your site, FolderCMS will insert the appropriate page content and menus at the server end to include the unique web content that the user requested.
Write your content
write your own HTML-formatted content in text files, one file per page of content
Name your file according to where you want it to appear in menus and what title you want the page to have
Place your file in the special content folder on your web host or personal web server.
Create sub-folders for deeper nested content (categories within categories of content).
FolderCMS scans your content folder and inserts the appropriate page of content for the user's location, as well as multiple levels of menus, into the web page you've created.
Later, to update content on your site, simply edit the files in the content folder. That's it.
More advanced features include the ability to serve different content to authenticated users (an authentication system must be implemented separately) or even mobile vs desktop users, as well as cascading templates allowing different site catagories to contain styling and layout variations.
Read the full FolderCMS manual for detailed setup instructions.