Laziness often helps you figure out funny ways to solve problems. Put it this way. I’ve found a hack to create a lightweight CMS in PHP that uses .txt files and query strings. Yes, you publish through a URL, and the persistence happens inside a text file. Not a MySQL database. Crazy! It works.
I know it’s a little frustrating (at least for me) to login into a CMS, or your host’s FTP to change a line on your static page to something else. Well, you can do it with a simple query string. Here’s the setup. It’s not fault tolerant in anyway, but it just works!
With this idea in mind, it is possible to a create a quite useful CMS with flat files and query strings. The potential use-cases for such a system are landing pages, short messages, or static one page websites which require constant updates.
<?php
//get the password
$write = $_GET['write'];
//if password is correct
if ($write=="password") {
//get content
$current = $_GET['content'];
//store content in variable
$file = 'content.txt';
//if content is written to file
if (file_put_contents($file, $current))
{
echo "Updated\n";
}
else
{
echo "Failed\n";
}
}
?>
<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<title> Lightweight CMS </title>
</head>
<body>
<p> <?php echo $current = file_get_contents('content.txt'); ?> </p><br>
</body>
</html>
About Ali Gajani
Hi. I am Ali Gajani. I started Mr. Geek in early 2012 as a result of my growing enthusiasm and passion for technology. I love sharing my knowledge and helping out the community by creating useful, engaging and compelling content. If you want to write for Mr. Geek, just PM me on my Facebook profile.
