I'd like to know if you think this would be worth it (i.e. have business potential); if you might use something like this; if something like this already exists and works (and I just don't happen to know about it). I may well write this anyway, as I was initially thinking, for my own benefit anyway; but I'm open to advice on working this towards perhaps my own company...<p>So here's the idea:<p>Right now, when I make a website, I'vdde gotten to the point of setting up template pages (shared headers and navigation and other features) with an area for that particular page's content.<p>My latest experiment, which really works well for small sites, is to stick everything in a single php file and redirect 404 to it and let it figure out what path the visitor wanted and go there (i.e. it detects that you tried to access /aboutus/ and returns the proper page, built from the various parts). Even CSS is called this way, and I properly output the css file to the browser via php...<p>So I'm thinking of trying to automate this a little bit:<p>1. Store page contents in a database - but I'd be storing html, with a text interface to work on the files, not a GUI.<p>2. Have a page navigation structure with automatically generated navigation menus.<p>3. Allow for multiple page templates<p>4. Allow for multiple widgets/plugins that I'm currently thinking would be how a template is made. So this could be things like a list of the most recently updated pages to a calendar of events, or... I'm not totally sure yet.<p>5. Have page/widget/not sure what other level of variables - like for pages, an associated "page title" variable that the page header widget would look for and use somewhere in the graphical header area of the rendered page, as well as put in the html 'head' section so it appears in the browser's titlebar...<p>I suppose I want to be a little inspired by Wordpress and its concept of pages (as opposed to posts) and its widgets and customizeable sidebar; but try to make it easier to write useful plugins, and make the page templates themselves a part of what's stored in the database.<p>Does this make sense so far? Am I giving too much info or not enough? And what do you think?
What advantage would your system have over any of the existing CMS systems? There's a dozen of good, well-established CMS systems out there (CMS made simple, Drupal, e107, Joomla!, Typo, Plone, and so on and so forth)...
Addendum: To some degree, I'm really inspired by WordPress. I think: WordPress makes it really easy to make a functional and useful website; although pages feel like they were a little strapped on; and making new page templates is a little hard; it's geared towards blogs.<p>So a lot of what WordPress does, I like. But my idea would be geared towards making websites for small local businesses, for example; rather than blogs.
Have you had a look at NestaCMS? Markdown, textile, or HAML support. Text files as your interface/storage.<p><a href="http://effectif.com/nesta" rel="nofollow">http://effectif.com/nesta</a>