Free Web-based content management for sites

Let’s start with the press release:

On Tuesday, April 8, Stateless Systems will launch a private beta of CushyCMS, a fast, simple and free Content Management System that aims to make Web designers’ lives a lot more comfortable.

Unlike other CMSs, Web designers can implement Cushy in minutes, without any hosting requirements or software installation, and it is easy enough for non-technical content editors to use without any training or programming skills. Web designers can give content editors access to separate pages or parts of a page at a granular level (headings, images, sidebars, etc), enabling them to produce standards-compliant, search engine-friendly content all in the browser. With Cushy, Web designers spend less time managing content changes, freeing them to focus on more important development projects. And did we mention we’re giving it away?

To see how Cushy can help you edit a site in under three minutes, please click here: https://www.statelesssystems.com/cushy/

My first question for Stateless Systems was “What’s the business model?” Co-Founder Guy King said:

Business model is in the future to introduce paid monthly plans. Rather then restricting existing users  we plan on allowing extra features to paying subscribers such as the ability for them to brand the interface and use a custom domain. Other features will be largely based on the user feedback we receive plus the time to develop.

In other words, what you see now will always be free; added value will cost some money.

I tried the system out briefly myself, and it worked very nicely. I can see this being useful for allowing a content editor to change specific parts of a site without allowing them to mess up the overall design. In many situations you might do this with blogging software, but this is a much lighter-weight solution.

I created a test page using my standard HTML template on my personal site, then went through the process of tying that page to CushyCMS. My personal site already had FTP access set up the way CushyCMS expected to see it.

Here is the CushyCMS Web control panel (click on the image to see a larger version):

I went through the drill of adding classes and titles to the two fields I wanted to make editable, and was able to edit the fields in CushyCMS:

After publishing my changes, the HTML looked like this:

And finally, the page displayed like this:

The fact is, I didn’t use half of the capabilities of CushyCMS in this little test. It can also edit image tags, for example, and both client-side and server-side script. Of course, the more of the site you expose, the more dangerous changes made this way can be.

The first 150 people to visit www.cushycms.com and enter the code BETA on April 8 will be granted early access. Cushy will be launched to the public on April 15.