Simple Licensing Solution : new license!

Hi everyone,

I’m glad to introduce SLS: a licensing (and free) licensing solution. I’ve been working on it for about 3 years now, and it has been used by a french SME almost since the beginning (thank you if you read this).

I didn’t think of a community license when I started this project, but I finally changed my mind. So SLS now comes with a completely free community license. There will be limitations in term of number of products/license you can generate, however it should be far enough for indies.

I created a page on this blog about SLS. There isn’t much information now, but i’ll update it soon. Try it out!

Appart à vendre (fr)

Hello à tous,

Petit post rapide pour la vente de notre appartement sur Paris. 65m² proche de toutes commodités. 2 Chambres et un grand salon, WC séparés, cuisine récente, cave et parking. 390000 euros négociable.

Plus d’infos sur http://gruaz.net/appart

(I’m selling our flat in Paris. Check the above links for photos and details, and contact me if you need a translation)

New teapot-hosting member : rigalsprog.com

Here’s the latest member of Teapot-Hosting: rigalsprog.com. If you live in Denmark and need to brush up your french/german/english skills, Gunda is THE teacher you need.

Since I designed the site from scratch, so it is not very impressive visually. However, the flash menu can be easily reused: all the configuration (colors, size…) and the menu items are defined in an xml file, and can be modified easily. I will upload it if anyone needs it.

RigalSprog: Language Courses

The site is build with LCS, which is still in a beta state. A new version (more stable) should be available soon.

LightWeight Content System (LCS)

If you are a website creator, I am sure you faced this dilema more than once:

“Should I use an existing CMS or start from scratch and write my own small backoffice?”

CMS are getting better and better, and offers plenty of functionnalities. On the other hand, it means you’ll need to dive into their code deep enough to do the tuning you want. Very often, it will take you almost as much time as if you started from scratch. And since there will be many functionnalities you won’t use, the maintenance will be harder.

I have nothing against CMS, and actually, LCS was supposed to be one when I started this project. However, when I realised many websites didn’t need more than a structure editor, a style editor, and somewhere to edit/add content, I changed the orientation of the project : it became a generic backoffice rather than a CMS.

So how LCS is different than a Joomla, Drupal or even WordPress?

Standard CMS approach

  • – Install the system
  • – Check a test page
  • – Understand the templating system, and write the modifications you need / Write a custom theme
  • – Adapt an existing style to what you need

LCS

  • – Install the system
  • – Create an HTML/CSS/javascript template from scratch
  • – Replace the hard-coded text by LCS Calls

So unlike common CMS this approach does not need any knowledge of the system to start a website.

LCS Installation

The installation is pretty straightforward : decompress the archive on your computer, upload the files to your server, and call the /admin page. One setup page later, you should be done with the installation.

There is no database, every data is stored in the “content” folder. For security reason, you may want to more this folder out of the http rootdoc. It is possible directly from the setup page, or by changing the path in consts.inc.php.