usefulness and employability of an almost-text-only CMS

I programmed an entirely text-based CMS a while ago.
I just made a version 2 of it that now has a news module, which is the only part that uses a MySQL database.
My script allows one to create/edit pages, link them to a menu, re-arrange that menu, create a contact page with a form and now post/edit news, upload images etc.... everything from within the browser without any html knowledge... you can build a whole site from scratch in minutes
Since now there are a million of these scripts available for free (Joomala, WordPress etc) I wonder whether this kind of script has any use.
I ask because I was considering releasing it as an open source code for people to use on their sites.
What do you think?

 

You need an easy to use templating system and a way to easily incorporate advertising content. What you really need to ask yourself is why would someone choose to use your product? Wordpress is easy to install and widely supported by a large community with plenty of quality plug ins.

People like free, and people like easy. But if you want to distribute your product you also need the community and or killer tools/plug ins to make the product useful to their purpose.

 

If it's pretty basic it might be very useful as a device for setting up websites for some clients who want to edit their pages now and again and occasionally add new ones, which would be nice and easy if it doesn't have a load of extra features like many of the popular ones around today.

 

That's exactly how I had envisioned it...
I never meant for it to be competing with WordPress or anything like that... It can't compete. It's also not a blog...
You can however use it to create simple website...
You can see it in action here: www.informaction.info
this is a test site
at the very bottom right there is a + sign and you can click that to access the admin page. The password is "changeme" so you can see the admin area

 

It might be good for very simple websites

 

Yeah it looks all right, so long as it's secure etc. Is it part of a learning project you did out of a php book or a course?

There's someone here where I live selling something very similar to his clients that he wrote in asp, he tried to partner up with me at one point but it didn't work out in the end because he didn't want to take on board any of my design ideas. Anyway I don't think his product was really any better than yours, the only other thing he had was to let them upload/edit a logo as far as I can remember. If you could make the URLs search engine friendly that would be a plus I think, but it's still serviceable as it is in my opinion. You could make bespoke websites for people off the back of that with minor alteration from client to client.

 

Thanks for your input.

I never read a book or took a php course. I learned it by myself to answer my specific needs (creating my own websites). I was asked once to do a website for a company and I did that. It took a lot of work and when the company decided years later to change their website and look I felt bad for all the hours I put in and the fact that code wasn't being used anymore, so I was thinking of making it available.

At one point I thought that it could have a "market" because it was text-only and some people who don't know how to set up a MySQL database or don't want to deal with it or have shared hosting that doesn't allow it might benefit from a text-only script. I guess I can't push that angle anymore since I added the news part that relies on a database. (although the news part can be disabled)

Adding the logo thing shouldn't be hard at all but at this point I don't wanna spend more coding time unless there is an interest, you know?

 

You could just use it yourself with companies around where you live, things like small clubs and local groups run by people as a hobby/charity/part time would find it useful for sure.