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Recently I’ve found myself investigating the possibilities of site development on some of the ’simpler’ content management systems around. Yes, we all adore Joomla, Drupal et al., but I have some project possibilities which I’m thinking would benefit from a ‘less is more’ approach.
A typical brief might look to a clean, simple template, (very) user friendly updates to a few key areas of the site, a photo gallery and a contact form – with no intention to expand the site beyond this simple outline.
Popular options would be to tackle the project with a Wordpress blog set up to function as a cms tool, or to use Joomla with its slick front end out-of-the-box administration features.

However, within a smaller project, an installation of Joomla, Drupal, Wordpress can consume significant time allocation in complex configuration and styling.
Is there a workable alternative?

Possibly.. a trawl of the Internet yields some interesting candidates. More listed here too: GPLpediaSlim Best Open Source CMS

1 – Nanocms
Possibly the simplest open source, non hosted solution, Nanocms is a file based cms. Thus if you install it on your server you won’t need a database. Content pages can be created through the administration area and links to those pages are generated automatically. The user interface appears straight forward, although I’m not certain how flexible a system Nanocms has for locking, unlocking of specific page elements. A concern would be the lack of plugins or ‘tweakers’ as the Nanocms community call them. Thus integrating form and gallery scripts would likely impact on the initial rapid set up.

2 – CushyCMS
CushyCMS is a free hosted cms tool. Therefore no installation or maintenance of the cms tool is required at the website hosting. A pretty appealing no cost solution. The system works using special CushyCMS css style tags, which you place on the site in question. When logged in to the tool specific blocks of content can be edited on the page. Images can be replaced too. The site would require the integration of a contact form and gallery however, with the gallery being managed separately from the cms.

3 – LightCMS
Billed as a “..content management system for web designers,” LightCMS like CushyCMS is a hosted solution, but differs in the service it offers. Here site designers can create and upload a site template – or even pay LightCMS developers to transform a design in Photoshop into an xhtml and css template. Your site then goes live fronting the LightCMS hosted system, which offers a good range of built in functionality including user editable regions, a contact form and gallery as standard. Costs start from $19 per month.

4 – Frog cms
From an impressively clean, and well laid out website Frog cms sets forth its goals to be a light-weight, fast, simple and extensible open source content management tool. Derived from a Ruby on Rails application called Radiant cms, Frog cms is developed in php and offers an interesting set of user contributed plug-ins including forms and a gallery.

5 – TYPOLight
The last cms tool on my short list, TYPOlight offers a number of attractive features as standard, including versioning and undo management, a file manager and an intriguing live update service for plugins and system updates. Plugins for different gallery and form creation tools are also readily available from the TYPOLight site. A comprehensive tool, TYPOLight might well prove a logical alternative to Joomla for larger projects too.

One should also consider the community forums and blogs offering advice in the implementation of the various cms tools on offer. Active community support is a considerable bonus in a Joomla or Drupal install, and a search for help with Wordpress will yield a broad range of results across the web and Wordpress.org.

A last thought, tools for easy manipulation of meta tags, url appearance and pay per click advertising would be most welcome too.