What is Sitesync?
Sitesync is my own bespoke Content Management System. It is not based on any open source libraries and has been hand-crafted by me since 1999 to do exactly what I need.
Why Do I Use It?
I am not a great advocate of other people’s code. I like to understand the way things work from first principals. So for me, it was important for me to have my own content management system. Actually, when I started, there weren’t any content management systems available anyway. Most people who had websites used (or employed the services of someone who used) Dreamweaver. I was never party to the Dreamweaver crowd, though I have extensive experience with it
Sitesync is designed to be modular as it needs to be able to cope with my client’s ever more esoteric needs – however, it doesn’t incur the overhead of having to be generic enough to have mass appeal (like WordPress and other popular CMS’s). As a result, it is very fast, doing only what it needs to, and only when it needs to. I recently load tested the system by importing all of Exploring Surrey’s Past pages (around 2000) and all of Wolverhampton Art’s pages (around 3000). Average page load time was 0.01 seconds!
Sitesync uses a very simple templating system that effectively means that a sitewide template can be created as a single file – no multi-template nightmares of other popular content management systems, and no endless recursive directory scanning for nested templates. Just one global template. It’s great, but the real proof is that I have been using Sitesync for years and years and it has never let me down.
Who Uses It?
Almost all of my clients use Sitesync. It has demonstrated time and time again it’s scalability and robustness and security.
Features
Currently the CMS supports the following features out of the box:
- RSS feeds
- Unlimitted lightbox picture galleries
- Rich text editing
- Integration with Google Analytics
- Image and file upload
- Limitless page heirachy
- Dropdown navigation menu(es)
- Contact form
- Page commenting
In addition, the CMS:
- Is lightweight and fast running
- Uses a simple templating system meaning that it can be easily skinned by anyone with basic HTML experience
- Can be easily extended to provide custom functionality
- Uses a core shared code base, so when a patch or update is applied, it updates all sites on the server