CushyCMS keeps it simple – an objective review
I’m a BIG fan of WordPress. I love it’s customisability and ease-of-use from both a developer and content author point of view. But I got to thinking that, as a CMS (content management system) it was maybe overkill for a smaller website which lead me to doing a little research for potential solutions should I need one in the future.
There are many simple CMS’s out there but they all require some sort of time-consuming technical configuration and frankly with the famed WordPress “5 minute install“, is there really any point in trying a new platform that is going to take the same amount of time to set up?
A colleague had pointed me in the direction of CushyCMS a while ago but I thought I’d have a dabble myself and found it an interesting application. It is essentially a stripped-down CMS with the usual WYSIWYG editors but everything is hosted externally (on CushyCMS’ servers) which then pulls content onto your webpage dynamically through the use of a ‘cushycms’ class on html tags, be it a h1, div, p…whatever. It even allows you to assign an img tag and then offers up an image uploader with auto-resizer…very handy.
I started off by signing up for a free CushyCMS account which requires just your name and email. Once logged in (no confirmation email required…another time-saver), you input the FTP details for your site which enables the very user-friendly interface to dynamically load the file and page structure of your website to the page from which you then select the directories and pages you wish to make editable. The areas of the page you have marked as editable (using the ‘cushycms’ class) are automatically recognised so you can edit away. The process from sign-up to editing content took me about 3 minutes (although I admittedly watched the instructional video on the CushyCMS homepage first which helped a little 
)…Wordpress install eat your heart out!
The one main obvious draw-back with CushyCMS is that content is not directly accessible to the website administrator but it got me thinking; is that such a big issue? CushyCMS is not aimed at prolific bloggers (that’s what WordPress is for 
) or a huge news website like BBC or MSN, for example; it is aimed at people with small websites that need an easy way to update SMALL amounts of content very easily and quickly.
CushyCMS doesn’t require a blank canvas on which to work either. Hard-coded content is loaded and can then be edited meaning that if you are worried about your website totally collapsing if something goes awry at CushyCMS then you need not worry…just hard-code your content first and the worst that can happen is you revert to a previous version. CushyCMS doesn’t directly edit the html of your webpage, it dynamically loads in content which appears to be layered over the top of anything hard-coded. Occassionally copying any updated content from the website may be advisable so it can be replaced easily.
CushyCMS has two packages available; free and Pro. Both packages allow full content editing of specified areas of your webpages but the Pro package allows a developer to customise the CushyCMS interface as they wish meaning they can pass it off as their own to a client. This package does come at a considerable cost of $28 per month though which is another reason I believe CushyCMS to be a personal or small website CMS rather than a truly viable commercial option.
All in all, CushyCMS is a very good application for developers looking for a quick and FREE solution to edit basic content on a website. If you’re looking for a friendly interface and editing in double-quick time then CushyCMS is the one for you but if you are after lots of customisation then invest the time in learning to use WordPress properly or contruct your own CMS. For the minute, I’ll be sticking to WordPress and other solutions but I’ll certainly keep CushyCMS in mind for the future.
