Pulse CMS: Ultra-Lightweight Content Management – Blancer.com Tutorials and projects

Content Management Systems (CMS) are a dime a dozen. Not only are there many of them available online but they come in all sizes and shapes too. From a flat file CMS (one that doesn’t require a database) to those that run on enterprise grade database systems, there’s always a CMS available for everyone.

Picking the right CMS from so many options, which are equally good, isn’t an easy task. From the cost of deployment to addons and ease of use, a lot of criteria have to be checked out. Recently I came across Pulse CMS and gave it a try — take a look.

Overview

Pulse is a simple CMS designed for small websites. It enables you to add content management to an existing site in five minutes. The CMS provides an easy to use backend so you or your clients can make edits right from a browser.

Overview

Pulse doesn’t require much to power your content. All you need is an open source Apache web server and PHP 5. There is no database required for storing data either. If you’re not sure whether your web server meets all the system requirements of Pulse CMS or not, use their the system requirements testing script before you pay for the app.

Pricing

Pulse CMS will cost you $20 for one time purchase per domain. If you plan on purchasing in bulk, a five license pack will cost you just $60. After the purchase, you will get free lifetime upgrades on all upcoming upgrades.

Getting Started

One can get started by building blocks or folders. Blocks are building units and can be created from a simple WYSIWYG editor. While it looks a bit stripped down, the editor is rather competent. A lot of text manipulation and alignment can be performed, and that includes the regular bullets, numbering, paragraph formatting and headings.

Adding a Block

You can use HTML code to spice things up too. A block can be saved as an individual unit or moved into a folder. Folders hold a bunch of blocks together.

Building a Gallery

Adding a Caption

Pulse CMS makes it extremely easy to build photo galleries into your website. You can create beautiful photo galleries by uploading multiple files at a time. You might also want to take advantage of the drag and drop image upload feature to get the job done more quickly. With each image you can add captions to make the effect more felt. At any point during the process, you can opt for a quick preview too!

Blogs & Forms

Two other important items that a website must have is a blog to reach out to the world and a form to collect user submitted data. Both the things can be handled with ease from the Pulse CMS backend. Go to the Settings screen to enable your blog, give it a name and a description. Other features like comments, number of posts per page and URL rewrite options can be handled from here as well.

Blogposts

Once you have tweaked the settings, head back to the Blog section and start pouring your heart out. The same WYSIWYG editor used to create blocks is used here too and hence it shouldn’t take longer to get your post up.

Without even writing a single line of code, a contact form can be attached to any page on your website. To prevent a flood spam comments and form entries, make sure that the CAPTCHA questions are set correctly in the Settings page.

Creating Backups

Backups

Backing up the data is a major concern for system administrators and webmasters. Pulse CMS comes with one click backup process. To initiate a backup, navigate to the Backup screen. The time taken to backup will depend on the amount of data you have in your website. But when I tried a few times, the backups happened much faster than expected. I guess that’s due to the absence of a database.

Final Thoughts

Pulse CMS is light weight but comes packed with features that could rival a full blown CMS. While there are a lot of free and open source CMS are available, Pulse CMS is priced perfectly and should be within the reach of everyone. One minor issue with this flat file CMS is the lack of customization options for non-tech savvy users. For those with coding jitters, the free design pack offered by Pulse can be of big help. However, if you know your way around HTML and CSS, you should be fine.

Pulse CMS is lacking when it comes to forms too. A contact form is readily available but that might not serve the purpose of everyone’s business. A better form builder is a much needed addition in future upgrades. Apart from these glitches, Pulse is a solid CMS and offers more bang for the bucks you pay for it.