The only requirement for the BeckCMS software is a web server running PHP 5. MySQL is not required. BeckCMS uses the web server file system as a simple database. If you do not have access to MySQL or would like to avoid it's configuration complexity, then BeckCMS is the perfect solution.
The main BeckCMS component is a simple PHP script. It is currently less than 300 lines of code. In fact, you only need to install the single index.php file to start using BeckCMS. BeckCMS also comes with a file named install.php. You can run this file on your server to install nicer default templates and some on-line information about BeckCMS to get you started.
BeckCMS works by embedding BeckCMS tags into your web site's HTML files. A BeckCMS tag is simply text or key words inclosed in square brackets. For example the include tag included another HTML file into the HTML file the tag is located in at the location of the include tag. This way, you can embead one or more HTML files into your HTML file. The incude tag looks like the following. [inc another_page] The square brackets [ ] tell BeckCMS that it needs to process the text contained within them as a command. The key word is "inc." This tells BeckCMS that you want to include the specified file into your HTML file. The last text in the BeckCMS tag, "another_page" is the name of the HTML file you want to include.
BeckCMS works by processing all of the BeckCMS tags. When the processing is finished, all BeckCMS tags have been replaced with their specified content.
You may use the following supported tags in BeckCMS:
That's it! There are currently only five different types of BeckCMS tags. These five tags are both very simple yet also very powerful. I will add a few more tags as BeckCMS evolves, I am sure. Here is what you can do with each one of them.
Say you are building a complex web site with several web pages. In each of your pages you may want to link to several others. Normally you would write code for each link such as the following:
<a href="http://www.yourdomain.com/my_cool_page.html">This is a link to my cool page.<a>
With BeckCMS you do the same thing with the following code:
[my_cool_page This is a link to my cool page.]
It's quicker and allows for other cool features of BeckCMS to work. "Like what?" You may ask. When you create a BeckCMS internal link, the other page does not need to exist. When you later click on the link, BeckCMS will let you know the page does not exist and present you with a link to click on and create the new page.