Needs we don't need

We are a species that creates false needs: we create and consume things just because we think we need them and they are not always the best option. Needs that we don't need. That's why we pollute every space we occupy: from the Pacific Ocean and its islands of trash and plastic, to dark cities full of trash. It would be no different with the internet.

Internet is polluted with poorly written, excessive, and often unnecessary JavaScript codes, polluted with heavy CMS platforms that, in theory, make life easier for users who could just focus on writing their content and less on structure. But in practice it's not like that: we waste hours, even days, trying to understand how these platforms work, and even more time adjusting extensions, settings, themes, appearances. And it doesn't always work out. Often all these facilities open all sorts of doors for intruders.

It doesn't stop there. Non-necessary needs call for even more non-necessary needs... All CMS platforms need a good database. But a website doesn't need that. In most cases, if you really needed a database to run a website, SQLite would be enough. HTML5 is fast and responsive by default and the web works without JavaScript.

Suggested readings

Unixsheikh.com:

• SQLite the only database you will ever need in most cases.
• The proper design process in web development.
• Stop pushing JavaScript!

What is the solution then?

My answer to this call is Fanzine CMS: a homemade Content Management System written entirely and only in PHP and HTML5, with a look and feel which resembles the default theme of a large CMS out there.

Fanzine CMS has a basic frame: banner, navigation bar, side navigation column, main content area and a footer. The content also allows the use of featured images, which the user can easily turn on/off at will. In fact, with the purpose of reducing the need for knowledge of HTML language, and thanks to the power of PHP, a commented section was added where you can define the default parameters common to all content pages:

• article — page title.
• author — author's name. Alternatively, if you are the only author of your site, you can set a default author name in index.php.
• columns — is the style="column-count:(...)". You can let it in auto, it's good for most cases. Will be created as many columns of 340px as possible. A typical screen FHD 1920×1080 will have 3 columns.
• date — if blank or missing PHP will get the file modification time and fill this field for you!
• email — author's email is optional but, if this parameter is provided, it will be linked to author's name automatically.
• image — featured image is an optional field. Default size is 640×360px for images inside the article (defined in index.php) and 432×216px for images loaded as thumbnail in the main page (main.php).

This section should preferably be placed at the top of the file. Order does not matter:

<!--
:article: Interesting title
:author:  John Doe
:columns: auto, 1, 2, 3... etc
:date:    Tue, 12 Dec 2023
:email:   author@email.com
:image:   image-in-img-folder.jpg
-->

Full markdown support

Thanks to Emanuil Rusev's Parsedown / ParsedownExtra, Fanzine CMS has full support to PHP Markdown Extra. This is important because "Markdown’s syntax is intended for one purpose: to be used as a format for writing for the web."¹

In fact, this README is written in markdown.

No database required

No database required! Place your images in the img/ folder and your articles in articles/, you can organize them by year, etc. Just remember to pass the right path in the links.

Easy customization

The main Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) is very simple: style.css. Easy to understand and easy to change.

However, if you think you need some help, this is a great start: CSS Tutorial. I learned a lot there.

Engine

All PHP code run from inside index.php: a short file with a few lines of code, easy to understand if you know the basics of PHP, and well commented.

A complementary file, called main.php is responsible for creating the main page with "abstracts" of all articles on the site. It lists the contents of the articles folder and creates the excerpt, the reader just needs to click on "read more".

What index.php do is to join three html pages into one, in this order:

+ header.html
+ sidebar.html
+ render a main page (defaults to 'main.php')
+ footer.html

The entire page is rebuilded and reloaded. There are no frames like there were in HTML4 (frameset, frame, etc.). But as it's a lightweight website (no heavy scripts, no javascript, no database), it's still faster than a CMS. This method is also cost-effective: you don't have to rewrite vast lines of repetitive code. For example: header.html is the same for all pages. Tons of meta tags written just once!

Render a Main Page

The "render a main page" step is where a "blog article" is rendered.

Hyperlinks

We can pass some arguments to the engine (index.php) via URL, using:

<a href="index.php?id=page.html">...</a>

And it will redirect to:

https://site.com/index.php?id=page.html

You can pass subfolders:

<a href="index.php?id=articles/2023/12/page.html">...</a>

And it will redirect to:

https://site.com/index.php?id=articles/2023/12/page.html

Nice URLs

If you use the .htaccess we provide, the rewrite rules will allow you to use "nice urls" by omitting the index.php?id= portion:

<a href="articles/2023/12/page.html">...</a>

Will be redirected to:

https://site.com/articles/2023/12/page.html

Don't forget to use root relative URLs: /articles not articles. Do the same for img folder or any other internal link.

Enable Mod_Rewrite in Apache2

In order to "nice urls" to work, you do need to enable mod_rewrite. The command to do this in a Linux server is:

$ sudo a2enmod rewrite

The above command will enable rewrite mode or inform you that it is already in use. After that, restart Apache.

$ sudo service apache2 restart

Footnotes

1. J. Gruber. Daring Fireball: Markdown syntax documentation. Overview: Philosophy. ↩