Unify: A New, Simple Content Editing System

Content management systems seem like the holy grail for web designers, letting them design the site, then pass off site updates to clients. However, CMSes are often complex to set up and use, and frequently end up requiring a lot of client handholding. A new CMS, Unify (http://unify.unitinteractive.com/), may provide the simple, straightforward solution to site updates that web designers (and their clients) need.

What I like about this CMS is that it’s self-hosted (meaning you put the PHP and other files required to make it work on your client’s server) and easy to use. Self-hosting means that you’re not dependent upon the up-time of 3rd party services. And easy to use, means that you can set it up easily and your clients can edit their pages easily.

It’s not a “complete” CMS: it’s won’t let you add new pages to the site, reorder the site navigation, or make major structural changes to a page. However, if you have clients who simply want to be able to edit the content that already exists on their site, Unify seems like a good solution. To use it, you mark off areas of a page as “editable”–for example, the text inside a welcome message, or the entire content of a “news page”–simply by adding a css class to the container tag. The Unify program can then read that page, and allow your client to edit those editable areas, using a straightforward (and slick looking) editor.

Unify is a product of the design firm Unit Interactive, and costs a mere $24.49 per domain. I’ll be checking it out and will provide a review of it soon.