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 | __/ _ \/ _` |_  / / _ \ | | |
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Jotz CMS design principles

Design principles

• Free, obviously!
• Minimalist (minimum viable CMS)
• Web 1.0 aesthetic
• CMS from scratch - few files, few lines of code
• Do not sacrifice simplicity on the altar of scalability
• The ideal solution will be "almost trivial" to implement once you know how
• Flat file CMS - no database
• Write in markdown (i.e. plain text)
• Easy upload / authoring from desktop or phone
• Upload from insecure device (maybe with approval/authorization from secure device?)
• Content should be as transferable as possible - minimum proprietary syntax
• No need to implement all admin functionality in CMS UI - admin is assumed to have read/write access to the web storage anyway, so that can be used for file deletion, editing templates, etc.
• Key functionality is fast and convenient authoring/editing of content from a wide range of devices.
• Intended for single author or small team where all authors are in touch with admin
• No JavaScript for CMS user or site visitors - HTML and CSS only
• Minimal data collection from site visitors - no cookies, no tracking, no popups, no permissions
• Security implemented via Apache password protected folder(s) and TLS (i.e. https) - allows login via URL shortcut, e.g. "https://johndoe:MyPa55word@tedz.eu/cms/"
• https for everyone - CMS users and site visitors

Philosophy / Inspirations

• "folk programming"
• "user developer" - Terry Davis
• "CMS from scratch" a la Linux From Scratch
• Type-in games from the 80s
• No tool lock-in - write your content in a format you can take somewhere else whenever you want

Assumptions / pre-requisites / dependencies

• Access to a hosted web folder with PHP execution
• Apache
• PHP (v7.4)
• https
• Parsedown.php

File structure

/.htaccess
/favicon.ico
/frontend_header.html
/jotz.css
/[article titles].html

/backups/
/[jotz_cms_backup_yyyy-mm-dd-hh-mm-ss].zip

/cms/
/cms/.htaccess
/cms/.htpasswd
/cms/backend_header.html
/cms/backup.php
/cms/edit.php
/cms/Parsedown.php
/cms/upload.php
/cms/[article_titles].md

/uploads/
/uploads/.htaccess
/uploads/[various_files .jpg .png .svg .c etc...]

To Do

• Create frontend_header.md so that user can edit front page header html?
• Add button to rename article
• Add button to delete article
• Allow author to write "custom.css" using the regular editor? Or maybe "jotz.css"?