I've just done a bunch of changes to my open-source PHP project called CATS which is what I classify as a CDS (Content Display System).
CDS differs from a CMS in that the main focus of the script was to act as a middleman for displaying content from files to browsers but with a large set of CMS-like functionality. The script takes parameters from either a ini file and/or directly off the query string to build HTML tables with dynamic updating, pagination navigiation, and templating ability to make the output look exactly as you want. Additionally, all the results are query-able via SQL statements so you can do filtering on any file property: name, extenstion, modified time, etc.
This is great for doing things like a Documentation area where all you have to do is post a new document file and the script automatically sees the file and displays it accordingly :
Date-based = SELECT FROM dir_documentation ORDER BY modified desc
Name-based = SELECT FROM dir_documentation ORDER BY name asc
etc.
Here's an live example of the above discussed usage in action.
Also great for doing on-line dynamic photo albums (which was one of the reasons I made the script). You can do thumbnail albums that link to larger images...since the script handles pagination, you can easily have the script return photo album sections (slices) so that you don't timeout a visitiors browser with a too many images at once. Plus the script has what I refer to as file captioning capabilities so you can document you photos (or files) as well if you want.
Here's an live example of the above discussed usage in action.
You can even use it display What's New, Links, and Blog data (like I do on my site). I've created a script called Logger that allows me to create files small text files from any computer with Net access. I'm not really pushing the Logger script in that I think there may be a slightly better way of doing these but it works great and took me like 2 hours to fully design and write and like 2 minutes to implement. If you start using CATS and are interested in this script, drop me a line and I will send you the details
While one of CATS main focuses was files, it can still be used on MySQL tables, and also on static web pages, including remotely served ones (aka: web distributed content).
Anyways, I've fully documented the script and posted all the templates that I use for my site which was about 95% of the work that most people will need to do to get up and running with CATS (you'll need to create/update your current site identity template: the other 5%).
Any questions or comments or enhancement requests, please feel free to either post here or use the email link in the support area of the CATS site.
Parting shot: Here's a great example of what you can do with the script...multiple site identity pages. Since it's the holidays I created a Christmas-themed site identity template to compliment my non-seasonal site identity template:
CATS home page - Christmas template
CATS home page - Christmas print template
CATS home page - Non-seasonal template
CATS home page - Non-seasonal print template
Note that CSS support is just a given so I've taken the liberty to change the font colors on the Chistmas template to match the season :-)
Conclusion: If anyone is in a situation where a CMS is too much of a hassle or too big for what they need, or you just have a lot of files that you want to display, or have a ton of data files that you want to serve out without having to post the data to your server AND your CMS system, this might be a solution for you.
Whew
Enjoy.
