iBroadway

With all due respect and reverence to Wordpress, the awesome open-source content management system that powers this blog, as well as a number of sites I’ve personally had the pleasure of working on, there’s a new kid on the block that just might have what it takes to pull me away from the tried-and-true, and venture out into uncharted waters.

I’m talking about CushyCMS, a super-simple system created by Stateless Systems (of RetailMeNot reknown). It’s designed primarily for web designers looking to add a no-fuss way to allow clients to update content on their sites. For each element in the HTML that the designer wishes to give permission to edit, s/he need only add a simple class="cushycms".

No fussing with PHP, no costly time spent trying (in vain) to enforce style conventions and convince content editors not to randomly make things bold, italic, purple, and struck-through, or attempt to explain how to keep the code clean and semantic and valid. Stress-free, beautiful, and highly user-friendly.

CushyCMS is obviously not suited for every project. The fact that it’s a fully hosted solution makes things simple to set up, but gives you less flexibility down the line than something like Wordpress or Drupal, for example. But for the right client, CushyCMS seems like it would take a huge amount of hassle out of the process and let designers focus on designing, and writers focus on writing.

I’m excited to give CushyCMS a test run in the coming weeks, and will definitely write about how that goes. The site is in private beta right now, but should be open to the public on April 15.

Here’s a great introductory video from TechCrunch that really highlights how simple CushyCMS is to set up and use.

CushyCMS from Duncan Riley on Vimeo.