JeffreyBarke.net

CushyCMS is a hosted CMS that works with existing sites and seems like a perfect solution for freelancers, budget-conscious clients and brochureware. It's free, very easy to use and administer and has a cute user interface. All you need to get started is your own web host and FTP credentials.

Creating a new CushyCMS account is easy and takes less than a minute. It only requires a name, email and password. There is no email verification process to endure—the account is created and activated immediately.

Once the account is created, you add a "new" site by supplying its FTP information. Then you "assign" pages to the site by specifying paths to existing files. If this step sounds complicated, let me assure you it's not. The user interface is so well-designed that even Web novices should have no problem with this.

After assigning a page to a site, clicking its title will bring up the CushyCMS editor. All areas previously marked up on the page with the class name cushycms will appear as editable regions. Headings appear as single lines, images have an uploader and other elements have full visual editors.

Collaboration is made possible by adding other users (known as "editors") to the account. These users can be granted editing rights on a per-site and per-page basis.

CushyCMS's simplicity will definitely appeal to certain clients and makes sense for certain types of websites. The price (you can't beat free) is definitely suitable for low-budget projects, and the fact that the system requires no programming knowledge will make it useful for freelancers and designers who know HTML and CSS, but no programming languages. The deployment time? Negligible.

However, CushyCMS definitely has limitations as a CMS. There's no way to add new pages, to preview work prior to publishing, or to require approval prior to another user publishing their work. Since CushyCMS is not database-driven, there are no "template" functions and no way to dynamically derive certain types of information (such as navigation or a sitemap).

Bottom line: CushyCMS is a very cool, but very limited product. It definitely has its uses, but its strengths and weaknesses should be understood and evaluated in terms of a client's needs and expectations. If they match, I definitely recommend it. If not, I suggest WordPress or Drupal.

For those who pay attention to this sort of thing: CushyCMS is powered on the client-side by Prototype, script.aculo.us, Lightbox and FCKeditor.