Welcome
This website will inform you about 3co, an open source lightweight
web content management system.
3co is yet to be finished and currently in pre alpha status. The first beta tests are planned in about one to two months.
Please be patient.
Why don't you look around a bit? Go and read on about goals and features
or take a first glimpse at the administration user interface?
Milian Wolff, developer
Goals and Ideology
So why do I write yet another web content management systems if there are already such sofisticated projects as
Joomla, Drupal and Typo3
for example?
I don't intend to create a bigger and more feature-rich application. I simply try to write a small and simple programm which does some
things better than other cms. The features and possibilities they give
the user are nearly endless but other (some would say minor) things are neglected. These are the things I try to focus on.
I want to create a programm which is set up in a simply way, easy to handle and yet offers a maximum of freedom and possibilities.
Features
I will soon update this section so you can get a first impression on how 3co is structurized and how one will work with
it. But many features are allready installed and others are planned to be coded. Thus - read on!
- Open source
- 3co is licensed under the GPL. You are
encouraged to download, use, copy and redistribute it freely. If you are a web designer you can use 3co in your
projects and sell it along with your services.
- Maximum standards conformance
- All templates are valid XHTML 1.0 strict out of the box
- Seperation of content and presentation
- You want to change the looks of your website? No Problem! Either edit the CSS or
dig deeper and modify the templates. All contents are stored in the MySQL database and the language strings (e.g. for errors
and such) are stored in a seperate language file.
- Support for any language
- As said above all hardcoded output (errors,notifies,etc.) are stored in a language file. Simply translate one of these or
pick an existing one. You want to use a non-latin language? No problem, UTF-8 is used throughout the application.
- Extensibility
- In the default setup 3co comes with only two modules for content processing: news and static contents. But there are more to
come and nothing is easier than installing a new engine. You will see!
- Furthermore it is possible to install new extensions which don't act as sections. E.g. these could be used for a modified/extended
administration of the user profile, for example by creating more fields for information and such.
- Use of unobtrusive and useful javascripts
- I'm a fan of javascript. There are so much useful things you can do with it but you allways have to remember that there are users out there
which have javascript deactivated for good reasons. They will still be able to fully operate 3co. The scripts which will
be implemented are just for an increased and improved interface experience. I have gimmiks in mind like Ajax "edit in place"
on the frontpage, so you won't have to go to the admin panel to adjust a spelling error you just stumbled upon. And of course
javascript could be used to improve the admin panel with "select all" options, live-preview,
Markdown-syntax buttons and more
- Much more
- I'll soon upload a description of the workflow and update this list. Also I'm curios on what you think. Don't hesitate and
write me an email with your suggestions.
Requirements
3co is a web cms, thus you'll need a web server such as
Apache. 3co is written in PHP and will run under
version 4.3 and higher. The data is stored in a MySQL database (version 3 and later).
Because I try to develop a usable and yet simple and unobtrusive administration user interface I make extensive use of current standards.
But that means that you'll have to use a proper browser, e.g. Firefox, Opera or Safari. Only the Internet Explorer won't be any good because it is years behind in development, it simply doesn't support the current standards. Hopefully the upcoming version 7 will be good enough to handle the administration user interface…
Best regards - Milian Wolff
