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First off, I would like to thank everyone who is as excited about this project as I am. I've spent a lot of hours and hard work making it what it is today, and I *do* have a specific plan set for it. What I am laying out here is not the law, but rather what I envisioned GetSimple CMS for. Obviously simplicity is the key here, but there is more...

1. Target Market - The market I intend to cater to is the small 1 to 15 page brochure site for the average small business owner. This person needs a simple web presence -- that's it. I believe there is very few CMSs out there that do this small group of website owners justice. Our targeted small business owner doesn't need e-commerce, a blog or a comment system. This business owners only requirement is to have a dead-simple way to manage his/her website's content.

2. Skillset Needed - This website owner should not need to know HTML, and the UI should be as straightforward (even if that means losing some sexiness) as humanly possible. He or she should not have to think twice about how to go in and update their 'Contact Us' page with a new phone number.

3. Aesthetics - I want our admin panel & UI to be better designed than any other comparable CMS out there. This may be more selfish than anything, but what designer wants his/her client to log into the admin panel and see a cluttered mess of cheap, non-intuitive icons that give no value to what that client needs to do? From studying my competing 20 CMSs over the last couple months - this should not be hard.

4. Designer's POV - I created GetSimple because I would sometimes dread taking on small business clients. I did this for the sheer fact that it would take me forever to 1) install Wordpress if they wanted to be able to edit or 2) create 10+ flat HTML files. Now all I need to do is create one HTML template file and copy it along with the GetSimple installation up to a host. I can have that site done in a day - AND - give the client a kick-ass way to update their phone number. I need this little application to have the power to handle what I need to do as a designer, all without sacrificing the other bullet points above.

If GetSimple starts adding features just to add them - then we will get lost in the crowd. We don't (yet!) have the size of community that the others have, but with a dedicated group of developers and a keen eye - we can create a project that will give any other self-hosted lite CMS a very, very good run for their money.

I am, however, completely open to features if they improve the quality and UI of GetSimple. I know no one here would claim to want to create another Wordpress-like behemoth, so if someone needs a CMS that does something even remotely out-side of the scope of this project's mission statement - let them choose Wordpress or something else that was built for it. There are a million of them out there to choose from. GetSimple wasn't.

Whew... Thanks everyone Wink
Great vision. Keep the spirit up!
I have been thinking about something like this for the last site I just did - I actually ended up using some of those WP as a CMS resources from your blog. So glad someone got the motivation to start it!

I believe this has the potential to be an amazing resources for the developers doing stuff for smaller businesses.
just keep on working on this mission and please don't forget about it.
Congrats! I like the clear target.
For comparison, I see GetSimple.. as simple. For example, I was looking for a collaborative environment for working on projects. I chose basecamp - even thought it was more expensive than Deskaway and zoho, because it had LESS FEATURES. It was intuitive. It was easy. It just worked.
That sounds like your vision - and even it's name, so I'd like to say: congrats, and keep that firmly in mind with any feature requests. 37signals make a big deal in their free book about making SaaS / programs - Getting Real - that it's about staying true to being simple.

So congrats! Keep up the good work! I intend to use this on my next project.
@AviMarcus - It's a great honor to be mentioned along with the 37Signal suite of apps. They are the epitome of 'simple', and just to be mentioned in the same sentence shows that we are off to a great start! Thanks!
Hi, I am french, sorry for my poor english.

I am very interesting by this project, I need to realise a website for a photograph, it's a small business. All I want is in getsimple, but I need a galery for him. I don't want you develop a galery but I need a clic on a menu linking to an external page ?

Is it possible ?

Congratulations for your project and for the good spirit.
thanks but I want an external link to pixelpost or zenphoto.
it is not that hard to make find the nav in the theme, behind the phpcode add:

<li><a href="http://yourlink.com/">yourlink</a></li>
I've been using Wordpress as a CMS for a few months, but i would love to see this platform be able to do what it does.

Doesn't necessarily need to have a blog component, but hopefully will see some of the features wordpress offers through some plugins.

Also this product is AMAZING. Can't wait to see where it goes.
Wow !
Great job - I really like your approach..

"get simple is a very smart CMS delivering the necessary while not distracting with the needless."
Thanks wizzy... that's a great line. I should use that somewhere Wink
For the past several years I've been working with CMS Made Simple, a great CMS for sites that are a step above what you see for your target market. It's fairly easy to use and navigate through; however, I do have the few clueless clients who have trouble with even that.

Today I was casting about for a simpler alternative and found GetSimple. I had already been working on the design for my client so I simply finished the layout, plugged in the appropriate PHP code, and I now have the basic structure of the site completed -- in one afternoon.

Thank you!!

Heather Feuerhelm
http://www.uniquelyyourshosting.com
Smile - I love hearing things like this. Thanks Heather.
Been using Wordpress for all client sites for quite a while now however the problem with Wordpress is that it's becoming the Firefox of CMS:es. It's becoming the bloatware it shouldn't be. OK -- it isn't there yet but i fear it will quite soon so a lighter (and for gods sake -- professional and serious!) alternative such as this, GetSimple, is just the thing that is needed. GetSimple can become the Google Chrome of CMS:es. Fast, light and to the d*** point. Smile

There currently are some stuff missing out-of-the-box like a news/category module etc. Those can be fixed (i know) but there are still some "Wordpressy" stuff that would be great to have out-of-the-box and i don't see it bloating down the CMS.
very awesome mission statement shared,..
i really appreciate it,..
thanks
For such a small cms (in filesize), GS sure does pack a lot of built-in features.
I've used wordpress and absolutely hate it. Extremely bloated and hard to work with. So many functions out of the box that it's like learning a whole new scripting language just to use it.

Honestly though, I'm don't think I'd add much to the core. At most only manage the code to be more flexible and open if need be. I think GS has just the right amount of built-in features at this point and it'd be more beneficial to simply build up the plug-in repository. This would keep the cms small, and also customizable for each site.
Thanks for the praise mindfull. We appreciate it - and agree.
A lot of small online business out there and its good to know that GetSimple can get handy on making things work the easy and most effective way. Good thing there are genius people like you. In fact, I've come across various CMS, but yours really works the simple and easy way. I hate complicated things, and your vision put hope into my online career. Keep it up and way to go!
Thanks for the great product, and I like the mission statement! As a web designer/developer myself I can tell you this is the BEST CMS for simple websites... need a blog? Wordpress, but Need a down-to-earth, secure, and fast website? Get-Simple for sure!
With a few refinements I think this CMS can be The CMS for a lot of people out there...
shovenose Wrote:With a few refinements
Care to share what you would change? I'm always listening... (open a new topic in feature requests if it's lengthy... thanks!)
I just installed GetSimple two days ago. It is my first CMS. I was looking for something right along the lines of your mission statement and it seems you hit it on the head! You did not mention "no SQL", but that was one of my requirements too.

I am surprised by how much I was able to do in a few hours.

The GetSimple version of my site will not be on line for a while because I have a number of apps to convert, but I do have some concerns about avoiding performance issues.

Most people equate small business with light load (from a server's perspective). My site currently averages over 2TB and over 1 million page views/month. I recently moved to a VPS service that supports that load very well in the current web site's incarnation (html+php on Apache/CentOS 6). Is there anything that you are aware of in the design of GetSimple that would make it less suitable for my application?

I am hoping that at most I would be able to deal with any performance issue by upping the RAM (my hosting provider allows me to adjust resources on the fly).

Thanks again for a great product.
It could always benefit from a front end cache or memcache.
If you consider switching from apache to nginx you can find a few config samples that include caching here http://get-simple.info/forums/showthread.php?tid=1269

Mind that you have to avoid some plugin that use un-necessary session cookies and prevent caching. If memory helps i had problems with a contact manager plugin.