Removing the Roadblocks
When we started out building SimplyEdit, the plan was to focus only on the frontend. Instead of building a monolithic all-in-one Content Management System, we wanted to build a component. We didn’t want to reinvent the wheel but rather re-use what others have built.
Unfortunately when we wanted to make sure there was a super easy and user friendly way to get started, we found there was no wheel. The Apache eco system has lots of tools to make installation of things like Wordpress easy. But only if you also buy into bigger systems like Plesk or DirectAdmin. Apache itself is squarely the realm of developers. The config files are just shy of a full programming language, and not a well designed one.
So we reluctantly decided to build the most basic management system we could. Just enough to help you get started quickly, but not something that would get in your way. The new SimplyEdit quickstart management console lives in a subdirectory ‘simply-edit/’ in your website. It requires a login to access, unless you’ve accidentily deleted all users.
The management console allows you to create, edit and delete user accounts. These accounts give edit access to your SimplyEdit website. You can also choose which users may use the management console and so edit other users.
In addition the new backend also stores backups of your pages. At most once per hour a backup is saved, so you never lose more than an hours worth of work.
The original backend had support for Prerender.io, which allows you to serve static content to those search engine crawlers that don’t render javascript well enough. Now you can also set your prerender.io token in the backend, if you need one.
Finally the seperate check.php page is now integrated in the new console. It automatically pops up if antything is out of order. It also fixes the common case where the .htaccess file isn’t copied, because it’s a hidden file in OSX. The checks now automatically create a new one.
You can download the new quickstart here, enjoy!
Auke van Slooten
P.s.: If you want to install the new backend over the old one, make sure that you move your .htpasswd file to /data/ and copy the /data/settings.json from the new quickstarts as well.
P.p.s.: SimplyEdit is still a component. One you can integrate with any kind of web application or CMS. The new management console is not a necessary part, but an addition to make it easier to get started from scratch.
