1 Sep 2006

New reviews site with my own CMS

Filed under: Site management by Hari
Posted at 20:14:07 IST (last updated: 16 Jul 2008 @ 20:14:23 IST)
I've converted harishankar.org into a general reviews website using my own simple content management system written in PHP. Actually it's nothing more than an articles manager. A very basic tool, but the advantage is that it's extremely lightweight, doesn't use MySQL and is very easy to update without any need for an admin control panel.

The reason I dumped WordPress for my reviews blog is that I wasn't really updating it that often and of course, the blog format is not ideal for a content-rich site. Nevertheless, I've probably saved a lot of disk space and an extra MySQL database and I have the pride of having creating my own solution for my needs. :P

I don't plan on extending this CMS into anything bigger as there are other tools that already do a great job of providing sophisticated systems. Mine is meant to be a simple articles manager and nothing more.

Hope you like it. Feel free to leave your comments on it here. And of course, if you need the source code, I'd be glad to share it with any of you. Just ask!

13 comment(s)

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  1. Great job - I like it!Do you store the reviews in text files? I coded a conference room app a while back which used text files to store the chat text, but the input was broken whenever there was a newline... I never figured out why. I'd love to see the code - if just out of interest :D My email address is: linuxsecmail [SPLAT] gmail [d0t] comIt's simple, clean, and looks good. Job well done :)

    Comment by J_K9 (visitor) on 1 Sep 2006 @ 20:21:11 IST #
  2. Yes, I'm using text files for the actual reviews and directories to store the categories. As I said, to update the site all I need to do is upload a new text file into the proper folder and it gets updated.No need for admin panels and it's very secure since there's no database and obviously no commenting system. I'll send you the code as soon as I get a few minor tweaks in.Since I developed it using PHP 5 on my localhost, there was one function which gave me trouble, but I easily bypassed it and now it works with PHP 4 as well.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on 1 Sep 2006 @ 20:33:48 IST #
  3. KLooks good Hari! That's not article script is it? If it is, you did a good job with it. Keep it up!

    Comment by Brad (visitor) on 2 Sep 2006 @ 15:58:01 IST #
  4. Brad, I didn't understand your last question. I assume you want to know what script I used?I developed the script using PHP myself. Didn't use any third party tool. It's not plain HTML files.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on 2 Sep 2006 @ 16:07:35 IST #
  5. I like the look Harim it makes the reviews much easier to find. Are you planning to add a search field? That would really add to the site - as would links to Amazon or at least the ISBN number. Or am I going too far? :)

    Comment by ray (visitor) on 2 Sep 2006 @ 23:18:49 IST #
  6. Adding links to amazon is no problem. But creating a search field would be a bit more involved.Of course there are third party search tools that one can add to a site, so I might add one if I can find something suitable.As for ISBN numbers, does every edition of a book have a different or unique code? If so, it might not be a practical idea since some books come in several editions and I don't believe locally published books carry this code.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on 3 Sep 2006 @ 09:50:25 IST #
  7. If an Amazon link is the easiest way to go, that sounds good. I think all books have an ISBN number - but I don't know for sure.

    Comment by ray (visitor) on 3 Sep 2006 @ 14:09:46 IST #
  8. I think I won't have the Amazon.com links for a couple of reasons.a. It's a nuisance to maintain an amazon link for each and every review.b. Amazon.com doesn't need any more back-links from the likes of me, particularly when it's a very simple search to get to the Amazon page of any product.I'll still post amazon links in my reviews at LiteraryForums.org but out here in my reviews page I'll leave it out.Also I think a search box is a great idea provided I can find any easy to use third-party site-specific search engine that works with PHP and Apache.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on 3 Sep 2006 @ 15:31:26 IST #
  9. I've made a lot of nice changes to CMS - mostly minor improvements, error checking and cosmetic corrections in the CSS which makes it render well in IE as well as Opera, Mozilla/Gecko based browsers and Konqueror as well.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on 3 Sep 2006 @ 19:48:59 IST #
  10. Great job, Hari! I've looked through the code, and it's all sparkling... Well, I only noticed minor things, such as using {span} where {h1} would be more appropriate, and things like that. Other than that, it's very good! :)// I've put braces instead of -lt and -gt signs in case Wordpress fails to parse them properly and chops off the rest of my comment ;)

    Comment by J_K9 (visitor) on 4 Sep 2006 @ 19:15:09 IST #
  11. J_K9, could you tell me which part of the code uses {span} instead of {h1} in the code? I'll be glad to correct it if necessary.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on 4 Sep 2006 @ 19:35:45 IST #
  12. For example, in index.php, you have:<span class="headingtext"><a href="<?php echo $GLOBALS['site_url'];?>"><?php echo $GLOBALS['site_title']; ?></a></span>And the line below that. Those could use 'h1' and 'h2' respectively instead of spans, as it would make more 'sense' (especially if the user is visiting your site with a CLI browser, in which case the CSS will not be rendered). Just small things like that :)I can take another look through it and jot down things like that, if you want, and then send the list to you?

    Comment by J_K9 (visitor) on 5 Sep 2006 @ 17:14:42 IST #
  13. Ah, I see your issue now. The reason I didn't give it a "heading" style is simply because I felt that the site "title" as displayed in the header band is not a document heading level. There simply is no HTML equivalent of a "Document Title" (except of course the title tag that appears in the browser bar).Giving the heading 1 tag to the overall document title and heading 2 to the subtitle/description simply doesn't make any structural sense in my opinion. Only the actual document content should have heading levels and not a "header band" which gives the generic site title.Do send me the list of things and I'll go through them and make corrections as necessary.

    Comment by hari (blog owner) on 5 Sep 2006 @ 17:35:15 IST #

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