BeckCMS is a content management system for web pages.
BeckCMS started out as BeckWiki. I changed the name because as I developed my wiki system it became less and less a wiki and can not really be called a wiki any more. Some of the concepts remain the same. The system is designed to let you easily edit web pages from any web browser by simply clicking on an edit link on the web page you wish to edit.
BeckCMS Development to-do list
November 10th, 2009
I have been working on the following items:
Better text to html conversion. This includes grouping text into paragraphs when there is one empty line between blocks of text. No empty line between blocks will convert a line break into a html line break tag.
General code cleaning. I have separated all functional blocks of code into separate functions. The main structure now is one if/elseif(...)/else block that only calls functions. I will see how clean I can keep it.
[html] and [text] tags are, I think, going to be the final form of "easy mode." When you use the [html] tag, all following text will be passed through with only BeckCMS tags being processed. When you use the [text] tag, text is converted into html and BeckCMS tags are still processed.
I can not decide whether or not to allow html in text mode. Not allowing it would make text mode easier but would also require me to bring back BeckCMS equivalent tags for bold, size, horz lines ect. I think I would rather keep it simple.
November 6th, 2009
I just thought of one more tag that I need to add. Right now, when BeckCMS displays a page, It assumes that the page is basically a text file with some HTML and BeckCMS markup. As such it translates things like double spaces, line feeds and non HTML displayable characters into HTML. I am going to refer to this as easy mode.
Easy mode is great for taking text that you enter into the plain text form and making it display on the web page the same as it does in the text box. This is fine when you just want to make a web page as quick as possible.
The problem comes when you want to create your page in pure HTML and you don't want any other HTML added automatically. This is worse yet when you try to write a script and HTML tags are added replacing special charters and line feeds.
So the new tag that is required to fix this is... [easy]. When you include this tag with no arguments, it will turn easy mode on and plain text will be translated into HTML. When you use the tag as [easy off] then only BeckCMS tags will be processed.
November 5th, 2009
Here is a page discussing how the main BeckCMS engine should work.
I would like to take a moment here to restate the goals of BeckCMS.
1. BeckCMS should be extremely easy to use and install. It should also be as small as possible.
2. BeckCMS, because of item one above, should have as few propriety tags as possible. The original idea was to do all markup in BeckCMS. This would then be translated into HTML. This is redundant and will be removed and replaced with a WYSIWYG JavaScript HTML editor if I can find one that does not add a lot of complexity.
Here is a list of all planned BeckCMS tags:
[main (n)] This is a reserved page. It is the page that gets loaded if no other page is specified. It is equivalent to index.html. Optional arguments are alternative text.
[main_template] This is a reserved page. This page can like all pages contain both HTML and BeckCMS tags. This page is written as a full HTML compliant web page.
[edit_template] This is a reserved page. This is the special edit page template.
[template n] If you include this tag then the page name supplied as the argument, required, will be used as the page template instead of the main_template page. The page you specify must exist and have a [page_content] tag.
[page_content] All template pages need to include this tag once. This is where the content of whatever page the viewer is trying to access. In this way, when you create a new page, you do not have to go through the hassle of creating all of the static content or HTML markup.
[edit (n)] Insert link to edit current page. Optional arguments are alternative text.
[img n (n)] Insert image.
[file n (n)] Insert file link.
[link n (n)] Insert URL link.
These three tags can be done in HTML but BeckCMS make it a lot easier. First argument, required, is the image/file/link name. The rest, optional, are alternative text. These tags will be implemented if I get everything else done.
[inc n] Include another BeckCMS page inserted at the location of the tag. The single argument, required, is the name of the BeckCMS page to include.
[n (n)] Any non reserved BeckCMS tag can be used to name a page to be created by the user. No spaces allowed in the page name. Only letters, numbers and underscore can be used. The server will automatically strip everything else. Every argument, optional, following the first is alternative text.
As I mentioned on November 4th, I also need to clean up a few things. Email reports to admin. These will replace much more complex site based admin tools like history, etc. Clean up the edit page and add WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get.) Use SSL on the edit page.
That is pretty much all I want to do with BeckCMS. Just seven BeckCMS tags and three reserved page names. That is far simpler than the thirty-three plus reserved names and tags I originally had planned.
--Nathan
November 4th, 2009
I have not worked on BeckCMS for about 5 years. This to me means it does exactly what I need it to do. This is listed below.
1. Provide an easy means of updating my web site from within the site while viewing the site form any web browser from any internet connected computer.
2. Take most of the hassle out of creating web pages. I can simply make a new page by editing an existing page to link to a page that does not exist simply by making up a name and enclosing it in square brackets. Save and view that edited page. Click on the new link. Click on edit. Enter plain text into the text dialog box directly in the web browser. Save the text and BeckCMS does the rest. I may be making it sound complicated but it is very easy and fast.
3. Functions I felt were missing are now provided by the web browser. Saving the password and spell check being the two main ones.
There are a couple of things that need to be polished however.
1. Add the web site header and footer to the edit page. That is why when you click on the edit link above the edit page does not look like the rest of the pages on this site.
2. Add an email to the admin whenever a page is updated with the new text and the old text. This will serve two purposed. It will serve as a backup and site history. It will also serve as an alert in case someone guesses your password.
I would like to make a more secure way of transmitting the password but that may be too complex for me. I can't talk about it further here it is so bad, but I do know how to fix it, I think.
I will remove any "BeckCMS" tags that let you markup the page like HTML. If you need bold or underline or whatever else, just use regular HTML.
Of course as the system only allows known safe HTML tags.
Another goal has always been ultra simplicity. That is why I created BeckCMS. I could not find a CMS that I could install quickly and easily. BeckCMS consists of a couple of PHP files and a text file for each page, that's it.
BeckCMS does not support CSS because I am all about backwards compatibility. I think windows 3.11 users should be able to view my site too.