Extremely lightweight CMS with inline editing? [closed]

Question

I help make promo/event websites that shoot up and come down anywhere from a month to six months.

Clients ask for minute text edits a lot during the creation period, and during the live period they sometimes like to swap out images or text every few weeks to function as updates. It's inconvenient for the client to do this all through emails and phone calls.

I have been asked to do research to find a CMS that will let the clients do minor edits like this.

I was pointed to big dogs like Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, and Typo3, but these are all very heavy-handed. I settled on trying ImpressPages because of its inline editing and undo log but it too began to ask for a lot - I tried to adapt an old project to it but it insists all content calls and form submissions adhere to its framework so it's definitely not easy to drop in.

I don't need a CMS that handles page creation or any sort of overhead. What I need is a CMS that doesn't care about any facet of the page other than editing text, swapping images, and probably a pretty secure login. Since we take care of the backend and it's only live for a few months it doesn't need detailed project maintenance and certainly the client should not have access to that.

Do you have any suggestions for lightweight CMSs that are easy to pop into a project?

11/11/14 EDIT:
Results so far:

I think a good alternative for this problem is Create.js and one of its children ContentBlocks, however they require node.js and REST which I have yet to really figure out. Quite different from what I know. However, this system allows for editing in-line on the page and saving right there, with no overhead menus or settings or anything. Just edit divs. Here's a link:

http://createjs.org/

children projects can be found by snooping the github

Answer 1

There are more CMS options out there than almost any other web technology. That said some are more and less easy to customize. It sounds like you've steered away from most of the common answers, although I really think you might want to look at WordPress again, with a little setup work and customizing the admin page it can be super lean and "dead simple" like Tumblr's interface.

That said there are a few more good options that are very light and yet full of potential!

Database back end

• Perch – This one isn't free, but it's not expensive. It is built with the designer in mind (by other designers) and is also built with the end user in mind, thus it is light, flexible and the interface is not daunting to the non dev. And has very very good support.
• Cake PHP – A lovely bit of OSS work, that will need some setting up by you or another dev, but once you have boilerplate/templates it should be simple to roll and unroll small sites.
• Anchor – Another OSS project that seeks to be powerful but slight in it's footprint, but probably more structured (less pre-dev time required) than Cake PHP.

Flat file

No DB required, the user just puts their stuff in folders (like on their desktop) and then they get webpages - kinda brilliant and maybe just what you're looking for.

• Pico – Uses PHP templates, but a simple file folder based structure, so there is very little learning curve to running or setting up the site.
• Kirby – While this is not free, it is very well supported by original developers. It is designed with the goal of being dead simple to use and support.
• Dropplets – This one is very very simple, possibly too simple, but there is very little to make a confusing interface out of. This one is very blog focused.

Hope that helps guide your search, as this list is far from exhaustive.

Answer 2

I have also been looking something easy and lightweight for clients to use for days. There are tons of options but there always seems to be something a bit off.

Finally yesterday I found two very good candidates:

Really impressed with both of them have been developing with Drupal, Conrete5, Wordpress.. but this is what simple sites need! Wow!

TidyCMS

http://tidycms.com/

Free / cheap license

Static pages hosted on your site + a connector that connects to the hosted editor. Basic package free.

"TidyCMS is a flat databaseless CMS that makes HTML-files editable and dynamic." A Finnish startup who are creating a super simple product!

It could not be easier you just throw in a static html-template and put a TidyCMS-conector folder and browse to the subfolder. The subfolder connects to the hosted editor. The editor lets you click on page elements to make them editable. The interface is pretty okay. A bit rough though still, with some glithes. Seems to be in heavy development, but it's already pretty usable. The UI hangs sometimes, for instance when saving changes and you have to reload.

Instant Update

http://instant-update.com/

Open Source! Free! GNU General license.

This seems to be more mature. Also handles static html/php -files but the CMS seems to need a database. The inline editing is pretty good and stylish. The system also has backend with simple user and page management. Still in development by a small group of guys. I'm sure they'll welcome more people.