CMS without templates [duplicate]

Question

Possible Duplicate:
Which Content Management System (CMS)/Wiki should I use?

I am looking for a CMS where I can layout the page from scratch using HTML/PHP/CSS and simply enter code such as:-

FOR EACH (listOfArticles) SORT mostRecent CATEGORY news LIMIT 5
    <div class="articleTitle">{title}</div>
    <div class="arcielBody">{body}</div>
END

to get a list of the five most recent articles of a certain category in the relevant place.

Does such a thing exist anymore? Unless my mind is playing tricks on me, the CMSs of five or ten years ago had this approach. I am thinking of MovableType and the now defunct CityDesk.

It seems to me that CMSs these days have a 'templates first' approach. I.E. you must always choose a template before doing anything - which I find really painful. Learning how to design these structured templates also seems overly painful.

So can anyone help me in my quest?

Thank you, Mark

Answer 1

You can always start with wordpress and very basic framework/boilerplate template meant for building your own. For example:

• html5boiler plate for wordpress: http://wordpress.org/extend/themes/boilerplate
• another html5boiler plate for wordpress: https://github.com/zencoder/html5-boilerplate-for-wordpress
• Zurb Foundation for wordpress: http://320press.com/wp-foundation/features/
• Zurb Foundation for drupal: https://github.com/drewkennelly/foundation7

Or maybe you just want a PHP framework to play around with like FuelPHP or codeigniter or Yii

Answer 2

You can put together a very simple CMS quickly with a PHP framework, most of the frameworks have some sort of "create a blog in 5 minutes" type of tutorial that should allow you to try several and pick the one that suits you best.

As far as the code you wrote above Wordpress does this, as well as others I'm sure. It also lets you change layouts of the data on a per category or per page basis. It is however, run from the theme folder.

Answer 3

Someone suggested WordPress - This is clearly not as clean as your example, but it's not all that worse, really. Here's the code:

<?php
$args = array(
    'numberposts'     => 5,
    'offset'          => 0,
    'orderby'         => 'post_date',
    'order'           => 'DESC',
    'post_type'       => 'post',
    'post_status'     => 'publish',
);
$posts_array = get_posts( $args );
foreach( $posts_array as $post ): setup_postdata($post); ?>
    <div class="articleTitle"><?php the_title(); ?></div>
    <div class="articleBody"><?php the_content() ?></div>
<?php endforeach; ?>

It's readable to me, but my bias for working with WordPress is I've done most of my work in it. I've also worked with SilverStripe, drupal, and Joomla templates, and none are perfect, WordPress is pretty robust. The documentation is pretty good too. Your mileage will vary a great deal based on the specific requirements you have. All the CMSs out there have differing ways to look at things, and all require a learning curve.