Blog

Script for searching public domain images

Python script

import requests

# Function to search Pexels
def search_pexels(query):
    API_KEY = "Your Pexels API Key"
    search_url = f"https://api.pexels.com/v1/search?query={query}"
    headers = {"Authorization": API_KEY}
    response = requests.get(search_url, headers=headers)

    if response.status_code == 200:
        return response.json()["photos"]
    else:
        return []

# Function to search Pixabay
def search_pixabay(query):
    API_KEY = "Your Pixabay API Key"
    search_url = f"https://pixabay.com/api/?key={API_KEY}&q={query}"
    response = requests.get(search_url)

    if response.status_code == 200:
        return response.json()["hits"]
    else:
        return []

def main():
    query = input("Enter the title of the image: ")

    pexels_results = search_pexels(query)
    pixabay_results = search_pixabay(query)

    print("Pexels results: ", pexels_results)
    print("Pixabay results: ", pixabay_results)

if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

February 2, 2026

Image compression service

In this post, I have compared the performance of over 20 different image compression and optimization services over a series of tests. This will help you in finding a possible answer to
“Which is the Best Image Optimization Service?”
(more…)

February 2, 2026
Cloud Storage: Less is More

In this post, we will compare the advantages or limitations of using a VPS (Virtual Private Server) for storage or data, compared to cloud storage providers like Dropbox, or Google Drive. Over the years, I have used both types of services.

(more…)

February 2, 2026
Cloud-Storage-Journey
Cloud Storage

My Experience with cloud Storage over the years
Introduction
Most of us use some form of cloud storage or another, be it Dropbox, Google Docs, OneDrive, or a similar service. So do I. But over the years, the choice and use of online storage services became a problem. Let me explain.
What is cloud storage, storage versus backup.
This is a post about Cloud Storage. Now, let us begin with the early 2000s, When there was something called as Yahoo briefcase, Then came along female with a massive one gigabyte of storage. And everyone thought that, Hey, Who would need more space? Very quickly, other providers also started catching up.
[–more–]
Background
I don’t 2009 or 10 came Google Drive. And I think at that time, they offered 15 gb, which this to do as a part of it. When I started the webinars, and I remember, but that’s when the idea of Google Drive with unlimited access came into existence. And I think, you know, there was really great. started working for Schneider Electric, they had their own shared network drive, which of course, was accessible through VPN only. But a lot of people started using something called as Dropbox. My boss in particular, are hardcore Apple attic. He’s he very strongly recommended Dropbox, they had a two gigabyte storage and through referrals, etc, you could get up to eight gigabytes or so I think I ended up getting it about four, four and a half, then I close the account opened up another one, Probably through referrals and things like that went up to around four or five gigabytes again, close to.
And finally, at this point in time, we have just one two gigabyte account that we use largely for Gaatha story. In fact, just yesterday, I discovered that my wife’s laptop, Windows 10 machine comes with a one year plan for a Dropbox which is 20 gigabytes, but we’re not using it because by now I think we have outgrown the gigabytes and we are looking at terabytes. Not to boast but i’ll tell you why. Because the need now more is about video and business requirement rather than personal storage. But till 2016, it was largely a story of personal storage. So we tried sync.com for security, tried p cloud really happy with it, I hope that one of these days, we will end up getting their two terabyte plan or lifetime plan as the case may be for business purposes. Right now quite happy with thunder drive that aren’t giving it a try, in spite of a variety of negative reviews. I’m still waiting and watching our four terabyte plan for $99. You know cannot go really go wrong. Hopefully we are not wrong. Then comes We also try it out with box.com. We I ended up using mega two plans, actually one five megabytes and five zero megabyte plans, Then of course cool for extremely happy with it, I think we will make it a part of our network strategy, right Amazon or drive for some time, they don’t really work out very well for us. And we don’t use it a lot actually, Google Drive with I think three or four different Google accounts, each one with 15 gigabytes.
And then of course I am a plan release thing started going out of hand, Then came the issue of how do we consolidate all of these and you know, use them together, Cooper can do that for AWS for Amazon drive for Dropbox for OneDrive, and OneDrive is something that I would like to talk about as well that for work we use one terabyte of you know shared per account. For my wife, they use something called as drew up for work for my personal use. Now We also use p cloud bill and Cooper between Brunel and I also ended up getting plans for one, I think it was I Drive, that was only a mobile plan for storing largely images. And we still use it as a photo backup. And also the rules plan, which was for cold storage, something that I was really looking for was a drag and drop solution. And I’m still looking for it. But what we realized was that once the large files were really moved on to these larger storage plans, which is at any rate is a cold storage plan. We don’t access them unethical.
Lee Lu is the 20 gigabyte p cloud plan, which you know, we got 20s through some reference, of course, it’s more than enough to serve our needs for today for personal use, and we will continue using it. Like I said before, still a fan of the cloud for now you My wife has gotten used to it, some failures along the way. We tried the next cloud tried data drive, which is again, I think on incarnation of next cloud. Right now we’re experimenting on the content delivery network part with our media host on a CDN, which will have which is based on next cloud, Incidentally, a separate post on that maybe on a later day. Maybe not talk about it at all, because it should not being selected.
So These are some of the cloud storage, You know, tools or systems that we have used in the past, how do we connect all of them, we have tried all drive, We’ve tried. P cloud can also do that to an extent and make copies of your Dropbox thingy. And then we also tried to for of course, and multi cloud, multi cloud works very well, There was something called as a zero PC, which could also do something similar, I don’t think they are in existence anymore. So These are some of the I guess I would call them the Hall of Fame of sorts, where in the innovate, tried to integrate the different cloud ones, just saw something else on one of the deal sites. They’re a VC funded company, and they also can provide a similar service. But we have not really tried that one.

Timeline

2012- Dropbox, Box (Corporate), GDrive, Outlook storage.
2015 onwards:
Dropbox (personal) Mega, Drive, Phone provided .

Current

| Sr. No |Storage Provider | Size (GB) | Since (Year) | Remark |
|:–|:–|:–|:–|:–|
| 1 | GDrive | 2013 | 15 GB | Storage for noncritical files, images used by fast.io CDN |
| 2| Nextcloud (Astian Cloud)| 2020 | 50 GB | Backup of noncritical files |
| 3|Koofr | 2017 | 250 GB | Bought the lifetime plan in Nov 2019 |
| 4 | Publitio | 2019 | 100 GB | Purchased this plan through Appsumo |
| 5 | GApps | 2011 | Unlimited* | B School Account, largely unused |
| 6 | ~~Zoolz~~ | 2017 | 1 TB 1 TB | The company has terminated the service altogether as on October 2020[^] |
| 7 | Rethink | 2019 | 1.2 TB | Lifetime Deal on Pitchground. Slow development |
| 8 | pCloud | 2017 | 20 GB| No plans to get more storage |
| 9 | Thunderdrive | 2019 | 4 TH | LT Deal on Stacksocial. Many people have concerns about viability of this SAAS. |
| 10 | OneDrive | 2017 | 5 GB | Unused|
| 11 | Droplr |2019 | 500 GB *3 | LT Deal on Appsumo |
| 12 | VPS (FlowVPS) |2019 | 125 GB | LET BF Offer |
| 13 | Dropbox | 2011, 2016 | 2.5 GB | Audio recordings. Had discontinued plan signed up again |
| 14 | iDrive | 2018 | 1 TB | LT Deal on Stacksocial |
| 15 | jioCloud |2018 | 5 GB| Unused |
| 16 | Asus Cloud |2014 | 5 GB| Unused |
| 17 | iCloud | 2018 |5 GB |WA Backup |
| 18 | Sync| 2018 | 9 GB | Figuring it out |
| 19 | Zoho Drive | 2016 |5 GB |Not used |
| 20 | Blackblaze b2 | 2020 |10 GB |CDN Testing with cloud flare |
|21|e.email|2019|5 GB|Not Sure|
——
^ I had purchased a ‘lifetime deal” with them in 2017.

Update Sept 2020

upon closure of Zoolz, I thought of putting together the list of services I have used over the years.

Features

Price, storage, location, speeds, encryption, Mac/ Linux App, Rclone, iOS/Android app.

Other Cloud storage Providers used in the past

Owncube (Nextcloud)

Mega

Box.com

Hubic

Cloud

Yandex disk

Zoho disk

Airtel Cloud (2 GB)

Amazon drive

Datto Drive (and faux pas)

Disroot

ADrive

Cloudme

Sugarsync

Jottadrive

Also see; List of discontinued file hosting services on Wikipedia.

Accounts closed

Features

Price, storage, location, speeds, encryption, Mac/ Linux App, Rclone, iOS/Android app.

Newer players

Icedrive, Eurake Host.

Photo storage

This is a category in itself

Flickr

Google Photos

Shutterfly

Photobucket

Smugmug

500px

Amazon Photos

Anyone with an Amazon account gets 5GB of storage for free, for videos and photos on Amazon Prime Photos. With an Amazon Prime membership at $12.99 per month, you get unlimited online photo storage.

Your video storage is still limited to 5GB, so you’ll need to pay for additional storage if this restriction is a problem. Extra storage costs between $19.99 per year for 100GB and $59.99 per year for 1TB. Extra storage costs an additional $59.99 per year for each additional 1TB of storage.
https://www.amazon.com/Amazon-Photos/b?ie=UTF8

Providers I have not used

Wasabi

OVH

Woekli

Mediafire (also read: fast.io)

Tresorit

Cloud to Cloud Transfer

(https://www.cloudwards.net/best-cloud-to-cloud-management-services/)

Multcloud

Cloud HQ

CloudFuze

Cloudsfer

rClone

Koofr

Sftp

Rethink (one way only)

https://www.i-smartcloud.com

https://www.systoolsgroup.com/migrator/

Cloud backup

Carbonite

Cloudberry

Spider Oak

Acronis

Wrapping it up

a. Problem of plenty
b. Consolidation
VPS for storage versus “commercial” storage providers. Best practise: Encrypt data before uploading. Companion post to file sharing services.
Cloud storage versus backup

Resources:
1. Wikipedia
2. Discussions on Reddit
3. LET/ LES
4. Cloudwards.net
Cloud Storage Strategy: 2018
1. Sync.com – Keep for personal critical documents
2. Zoho – No major storage, email social documents only instead of Google Docs
3. OneDrive- will have to keep: Skype account
4. iCloud- Do not use?
5. Dattodrive- keep, but do not store major data after March 2018 possibly close in July 2018.
6. All GDrive- empty out/ not use anymore
7. Owncube- close account ?
8. Mega- Clean out account, Delete 1 account
9. Dropbox- Keep till March, then delete once Zencastr opens up to to others
Wrapping it up

a. Problem of plenty
b. Consolidation
VPS for storage versus “commercial” storage providers. Best practise: Encrypt data before uploading. Companion post to file sharing services.
Cloud storage versus backup

Resources:
1. Wikipedia : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloud_storage
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_online_backup_services
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_hosting_service
2. Discussions on Reddit
3. Quora
4. LET/ LES
5. Cloudwards.net
image host
So far. And I don’t think we will, because at this point in time, given our total storage requirements, if I and also, if I were to add the storage requirements from all the different, you know, hard this external hard disk terabyte and a half, I think I’ll talk about that a 300 GB Hard does that we use for personal use, and then a terabyte and a half that use for another cloud storage service. So I think ended up doing replicating, you know, duplicating, multiplying many things doing the same thing over and over again, I have been guilty of that in the past, but sometimes that is by design, redundancy helps assurance helps in case one goes, Excuse me, One goes down there is the other one, Like was a bad example or a bad case with that notarized and then also mega when they reduce the plan size from five zero to one, five gigabytes. So we really had to move a lot of data out Few that we wanted to try but shut down quickly. copy.com Then there was bid Casa and you know, there were a few others, add links to the third party, you know, review sites etc.
So you’ve got cloud words, I would like to use Carbonite, I would like to try and use the the other one also, which a lot of people have recommended for recent times. And that would be So you know, we tried media fire also. So live fire link, for example, we can add in the discussion about jumper drive. Maybe we also tried the other one, right, the Sweden one which only gave two gigabytes or three gigabytes of storage, etc. So Yeah, we can talk about life fire, we can talk about cloud words, we can add link to some core, our Reddit discussions. We can also talk about black Blaze. Yeah, black blazes, the one I was looking about for dentists or it Then there is photo lemur is for photos storage, There is just cloud, then there is. So add the link basically from this, you know, Cloud Storage blog post.
The question is, why not use some of our existing cloud providers since they provide unlimited storage Anyways, maybe we will maybe we should not. That is not the intended use. We’re not using it for Cloud Storage, we’re using it for web hosting. So my theory has been if you use it for purposes that you’re not supposed to, you will end up with unintended consequences, Then there is another one, right go to cloud storage.net that we could use this link in the blog post. So these are all links, which rank quite high on Google. So we link to them, hopefully look for a backlink, or maybe go ahead and comment on their site, saying that, hey, great, you know, helpful, blah, blah, blah, and, you know, I’m adding going ahead and adding the link to my, my post to your thing, Hope your reviews will find it useful.
Now The thing is all of this content, we also need to go ahead and record that in Hindi as a Hindi post. Now, what we could do is if we add images and regular slideshow can also go ahead and do that in slideshare. Yeah. Also go ahead and talk about go cloud and Airtel flower and you know, all the geo cloud deals and the games people play on YouTube, etc. You know, YouTube, Link
cloud free be, I wouldn’t recommend any of that it actually makes sense to go out and play. It’s like this, right? You go ahead and buy a computer worth thousands of dollars, and then you install pirated software on it, or you buy an iPhone, and then you go ahead and do all these little silly things that don’t really make a lot of sense to you, right? So Yeah, then there is this new player is Dr. There is Cooper that really low, not tried vocally, then there is next cloud and then there is own cloud. Yeah, Not really tried something called as both storage or sync thing, or there is another one called I think it starts with the PS Well, that we are not tried. So the ones we use regularly and will call very, you know, highly recommend, and this is personal recommendation, Be Cloud es for personal, maybe eventually for business, but it does get expensive.
pOH look for the dealer on Black Friday or thereabouts. If you can find one, Very recently started using Thunder drives slow for downloads, Then there is rules that we have been using. And then we also have Cooper that we use very regularly. So very happy so far with Cooper also. Yeah, So These are some of the tools that we’ve been using over the past several days, We got Other than that, what I could say is cloud storage, you can use email as a cloud storage as well, we used this guy, right inbox.eu also that offers 10 gigabytes or 20 gigabytes of cloud storage, You can give that a try, We have probably outgrown the free cloud storage thing by now. We just go ahead and pay for things that make sense from a business point of view when it gives assurance and continue to but more importantly, free works. You know, we react to a certain point in time in your business, you need to get out of this scrappy, I know do it for free kind of mode. And you really need to start concentrating on using the best tool for to do the job to get the job done.
You know that we’re not spending too much of time for r&d and wasting things on non critical business activities. Right. So Yeah, that is where we are when it comes to the whole cloud storage thing. What is in store what is the future I think everything is Anyway moving to cloud, what I would recommend is the most critical stuff has to stay password protected. The most critical thing, Oh, by the way, talk about our clone as well terminal based, right, and our sink basically and our clone and how use that on a Linux machine. So coming to the bottom line number one, if its mission critical, you know, make sure that it is arc it is protected, most of the sites do offer full encryption, two factor authentication, etc. But if it’s absolutely critical, It has to be locally encrypted and then uploaded to the server, maybe another blog post on that number one, you know, through tools, third party tools, etc, locally and corrupt and then upload or download and decrypt etc. Second is maybe use tools like terminal based tools for encryption.
Third is maybe use secure FTP instead of just regular web browser based hosting may not work for all of us for a business critical thing to go in for a paid plan effort. Now of course, Joe Cloud Now to the startup India thing we get five terabytes of storage which we are not really using then the question is if they were offering five terabytes Why did I go ahead and get Thunder drive or whatever you know, maybe I’ll go ahead and get a refund I don’t know yet. So Yeah, these are some of the the tools of the trade that we have used for cloud storage so far. made some mistakes along the ways you know being happy with some purchases for for example, be crowd Not yet purchase but still happy. Wish some things had worked for us. Mecca, for example, purely from a security point of view, some sad some that did not work for us at all. Dr. Dr. also tried this thing, or is that Germany all our website that we tried? So that one that did not work for us? One feature tried not really like people use the base tab guys, right? We transfer. We’ve tried that, you know, like the service. I don’t know why we’re not used it a whole lot

You know how to link multiple cloud storage devices. We can also talk about, you know how to do it on mobile phone, how to backup your images,save your archival email, how to protect your online cloud storage data. These are some of the keywords that we could go ahead and use and add the links that I have added in the cloud storage text, text, write the blog post, that I have added and then of course, use screenshots and make a video of written in the that is about it for now, possibly Marathi as well.
https://duckduckgo.com/?q=online cloud storage&t=ffab&atb=v175-7&ia=web
https://www.goodcloudstorage.net/cloud-research/free-cloud-storage/
https://cloud.google.com/storage/
https://www.technradar.com/news/the-best-cloud-storage
https://www.dropbox.com/features/cloud-storage
Youtube link- Jio Cloud Free Deal
https://www.cloudwards.net/comparison/

When “free” online storage comes at a cost.

###The problem of plenty
Over the years, I have accumulated Two gmail accounts, one Windows Live! account, Dropbox, Cloudme, and after I got the Mac, an iCloud account. The good part is, I had a total of 50 GB of ‘free’ online storage. Add to that an additional 20 GB through My wife, 100 GB from my web host, and my alma mater’s google Apps (now Google Suite) account theoretically offers ‘unlimited’ storage). For sake of simplicity, let us say we have a total of 170 to 180 GB of ‘free’ online storage, which is awesome.
Add the storage table here
I began storing the backups of documents into different accounts, and over a period of time, it became a nightmare. I began storing my writing samples, personal documents, academic transcripts, and other important documents on one of the two Google Drive accounts, with a copy on One Drive. Documents related to my business, Kamakshi Media were stored on the Google Drive.

All edited audio files for MyKitaab and Baalgatha Podcasts were originally stored on Dropbox. I would also use Dropbox for sending the raw audio files to my editor and get back the edited files into Dropbox, and with a 7 GB storage, I quickly began to run out of space. So I ended up transferring the completed audio files onto my second gmail account, and dropbox was used for storing screenshots, images to be used in Social media, and sharing files with the editor. iCloud began to be used for storing all expense reports, receipts, and invoices.

Last week, I had to search for a couple of documents related to my wife’s work, and it took me over an hour to locate them. They were not on any of the online drives, but I could find them on the external 300 GB Seagate drive that I use for backing up data locally. That got me thinking, “Finding a document take me so long to find, what will happen if I had to search for images?” With thousands of photographs, it is not practical to name each image. That means opening up (or previewing) each image to find the photograph was had taken during our last vacation, for example.

##There HAS to be a better way
The above line is a hat tip to Kevin O’Leary from Sharktank, and I took this line seriously. I wanted only two storage accounts, one for day to day use, and the other for a periodic backup. I signed up for Mega, the site which offers 50 GB storage in their free account. Using Multcloud, I moved all the scattered files to Mega, and cleared out the One Drive and one of the Google Drive accounts. Storage in Dropbox was brought down to 1 GB of files that I had shared with editors, customers and some other folks. One of my Google accounts became a shared account across all the Google accounts between my wife and I. This includes the mp3 files (final version of the files for MyKitaab Podcast), total storage space = 11 GB and counting. Once the 15 GB space is consumed, I will start storing the files on my Wife’s google Drive storage space, and share the files back with me. All my writing will be in Dropbox, with a backup on Mega.

Infographic: post from 2018
All the documents related to Kamakshi Media were moved to iCloud. Mega will be the ‘data dump’ for all documents, organized into relevant folders.

Way Forward
Once this was accomplished, I decided to close the One Drive and Cloudme accounts, which I thought did not serve much purpose.
New storage structure:
Mega 50 GB
Google Docs 15 GB
Dropbox 7 GB
iCloud (5 GB)

Koofr workflow : 2019

Below may be over-information for you but thought of mentioning it because I think this could be
We at gaatha story have 10 podcasts, in 4 languages. We have a remote team of 8 narrators in who live in 6 cities and 3 audio editors who live in 3 different cities. Almost all of them use Koofr to upload the files- each has been provided with a folder, workflow is as follows:
1. Narrators upload the audio.
2. Content editors listen to the audio, if accepted, drag and drop to audio editor’s folder.
3. The audio editor downloads the file, processes it, uploads the finished file.
4. Content editor reviews the finished file again, if accepted, sends to the publishing team who upload it to the media server.
5. A couple of narrators who have very good quality- send to the audio editor directly, saving us time.
  The 250 GB plan now allows us to plan on scaling using the same setup for another year to come. Low price considering the efficiency achieved.
  Frankly, we have tried ten or eleven cloud storage/ sharing services. Each had some limitation or another. Pcloud and Koofr were the closest that worked well, Koofr – more users found Koofr user friendly (many of them not technically inclined). So there you go.
2020: Signing up for a Storage VPS

In spite of my thoughts on having plenty of storage, the one that we use most for Gaatha story because of its convenience and ease of use is hufa. And we have a 250 gigabyte plan. We were running out of space at 230. gigabytes already, and with a lot more content to come, there was a need to either upgrade the existing plan to a terabyte or look for an alternative, but alternative, of course, was to transfer the files. Some of the files from Kufa and empty empty space. And that is the path we decided to follow. I had already backed up on Google drive through the integration that Kufa offers. But that was not adequate. There is something called as not too many backups, and something that I have come to believe in. Therefore, when this offer came up at seven, US dollars or 15 US dollars a year. It almost became a no brainer. On Sunday afternoon. I signed up for this service. set up Debian 10 with disk encryption. And after SSH. We were good to go. Our clone configuration in Debian 10, you have to do it as a web app, not as a regular one this is something that I came as a surprise to me because past incarnations did have go for in fact if you read koufos blog itself, it talks about our clone as one of the. I school for as one of the options, native to the menu in our clone. Anyway, long story short, there is also walk around the Kufa documentation in that sense is quite helpful, wherein I created a web dev account using a temporary password, an expert who fought with our clone. That is where the versatility and I guess the unit was spent universality of using some of the open standards and having multiple options for connections come into play. Next, the process started. Where in from one particular folder of 38 gigabytes. I started moving the files. But like any code process. I did not start right away with the real stuff. In the sense, I initially did a dry run in the verbose mode just to check if there were any errors or any other things that one could expect. Fortunately, there were no issues, and have taken a couple of screenshots of that. About halfway through, in about 15 minutes. Most of the data was transferred now this is slow because they’re using WebDAV hopefully in a future upgrade or maybe I will try and find out if there is a way of doing this faster through the native route. Once that is done, about 30 gigabytes of data would be freed up from this drive, I can probably transfer out to flow VPS because it does provide 5500 gigabytes of transfer out every month. So why not put it to use. Having done that. I will have backup of a backup of a backup. Then, the main files can be deleted, after which we should be good for about a couple of months, the question arises, why not go the whole hog right now, incremental makes sense. Probably I will repeat this process in a month’s time. In fact, if one sets up a cron job. This can be automated as well. Those are all advanced steps, which I am not quite adept with as yet to do for a future point in time. lessons learned. Number one, if you know your way around. If you’re comfortable with the command line. Our clone is an amazing tool.

Second,

it’s always preferred to encrypt your data.

So something for a future point in time maybe a smaller test file which I will encrypt at the source and then transfer it as a backup here. Fortunately, none of the information which is stored right now is critical. It was a temp folder. Number three is four, and it’s amazing. Number four, rinse and repeat. You can you can always experiment and try with other features as well.

Rclone

rclone copy -P pcloud:/ pcl/
Transferred: 7.791G / 7.791 GBytes, 100%, 33.559 MBytes/s, ETA 0s
Errors: 0
Checks: 0 / 0, –
Transferred: 419 / 419, 100%
Elapsed time: 3m57.7s
February 2, 2026
office suite journey

This morning I read a news update about LibreOffice, the free and open source office suite. They are in the process of releasing web based version. For this, they will use a technology called LOWA. The development is in early stage at this point in time. I learnt that a demonstration was given earlier, during the meet of free and open source software developers meeting (FOSDEM). Reading the article from Makeuseof, and looking at the web based interface brought back a flood of memories.
(more…)

February 2, 2026
Updates to Server Avatar Panel
In September 2021, Server Avatar released a series of updates to their panel. Before the big set of changes hit, I thought of capturing screenshots form the old interface. Once the new UI settles down, I will post the new images.
Positive growth.

Nature, in the common sense, refers to essences unchanged by man; space, the air, the river, the leaf. Art is applied to the mixture of his will with the same things, as in a house, a canal, a statue, a picture. But his operations taken together are so insignificant, a little chipping, baking, patching, and washing, that in an impression so grand as that of the world on the human mind, they do not vary the result.

Undoubtedly we have no questions to ask which are unanswerable. We must trust the perfection of the creation so far, as to believe that whatever curiosity the order of things has awakened in our minds, the order of things can satisfy. Every man’s condition is a solution in hieroglyphic to those inquiries he would put.
New Interface Images
February 2, 2026
How to Install ClassicPress CMS
Key Topics: Switch, WordPress, Installatron, domain name, support forum

Outline:
- How to Install ClassicPress CMS
- Switch to ClassicPress from WordPress
- Can I migrate to ClassicPress from any version of WordPress?
- 1. Download the migration plugin
- 2. Add the plugin to your WordPress installation
- 4. Run the migration
How to configure ClassicPress using VestaCP – UpCloud (upcloud.com)

Key Topics: Vestacp, Password, cloud server, ip address, classic.example.com

Outline:
- How to configure ClassicPress using VestaCP
- How to configure ClassicPress using VestaCP
- Prerequisites
- Step 1. Setting domain name records
- Step 2. Creating new user with sudo privileges
- Step 3. Installing Vesta Control Panel
Add a CLI prompt OR an option to install ClassicPress instead of WP … (github.com)

Key Topics: Bedrock, create-project roots, hard fork, latest version, current behavior

Outline:
- Add a CLI prompt OR an option to install ClassicPress instead of WP · Issue #398 · roots/bedrock
- Join GitHub today
- Have a question about this project?
- Comments
- Essential cookies
- Analytics cookies
Install ClassicPress CMS on Ubuntu 16.04 (websiteforstudents.com)

Key Topics: Apache, MariaDB, sudo systemctl, Download, configuration file

Outline:
- Install ClassicPress CMS on Ubuntu 16.04
- Install ClassicPress CMS on Ubuntu 16.04 | 18.04 | 18.10 with Apache2, MariaDB and PHP 7.2
- Step 1: Install Apache2 HTTP Server
- Step 2: Install MariaDB Database Server
- Step 3: Install PHP 7.2 and Related Modules
- Step 4: Create ClassicPress Database
How To Setup ClassicPress/Wordpress on Ubuntu 16.04 Using … (devsrealm.com)

Key Topics: PuTTy, Password, Vesta, Nameserver, Ubuntu

Outline:
- Classicpress/Wordpress on Ubuntu 16.04 Using VestaCP at Digital Ocean
- How To Setup ClassicPress/Wordpress on Ubuntu 16.04 Using VestaCP at Digital Ocean
- What is ClassicPress
- An Unmanaged Server
- What is a DigitalOcean VPS?
- Registering at DigitalOcean
ClassicPress (reddit.com)

Key Topics: WordPress, Scott, Bowler, Scott Bowler, Forked

Outline:
- r/ClassicPress
- Can ClassicPress import a current WP install?
- What if we forked the Classic Editor plugin instead?
- Volunteer to help
- ClassicPress versioning
- ClassicPress
WordPress roundup: What to make of ClassicPress and much more … (mainwp.com)

Key Topics: ClassicPress, Gutenberg, Mortgage Calculator, Caldera Forms, Gravity

Outline:
- WordPress roundup: What to make of ClassicPress and much more – MainWP WordPress Management
- WordPress roundup: What to make of ClassicPress and much more
- ClassicPress
- Instagram
- All MainWP Pro Extensions are available through one of our convenient bundled packages.
- Mortgage Calculator
WordPress vs ClassicPress (quickcleancode.com)

Key Topics: WordPress, Plugin, Switch, sidebar, popular plugin

Outline:
- WordPress vs ClassicPress
- What is ClassicPress?
- Can I Use ClassicPress Now?
- What are the Pros and Cons of ClassicPress?
- Pros
- Cons
January 12, 2026
Exploring Flat File Content Management Systems

There exists a different kind of content management system that stores information in the form of flat files. These are essentially text files that house all your data, using a unique hierarchy or structure. By their very nature, flat file content management systems are lightweight, requiring fewer resources compared to more robust systems like Drupal, WordPress, or Typo3.

These systems are easy to maneuver and comprehend, with their speed, convenience, and ease of use fueling their recent popularity surge. Ironically, the initial set of web pages created when the World Wide Web was born were also static pages, utilizing basic HTML. Similarly, most flat file content management systems employ some form of scripting language, often a mix of HTML, JavaScript, and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets)

Outline

Introduction
Definition of Content Management Systems
Traditional CMS vs Flat File CMS
Introduction to Flat File CMS

Understanding Flat File CMS
Basic structure of a Flat File CMS
Brief history and development of various Flat File CMS

Deep Dive into Various Flat File CMS
HTMLE: Overview and unique features
PicoCMS: Overview and unique features
Blue XML: Overview and unique features
HTMLY: Overview and unique features
Dakenstrom Yellow: Overview and unique features
Grav: Overview and unique features
FlatPress: Overview and unique features
FlexType CMS: Overview and unique features

Key Learnings and Takeaways
Summary of the unique features of each CMS
Situations where one might be preferable over the others

Conclusion
Final thoughts on Flat File CMS and their use cases

Links and Resources
CMSCritic
Wikipedia page on content management systems
Reddit thread on self-hosted applications
Bing or DuckDuckGo search for flat file content management system
Softaculous section on CMS
InstallTron
GitHub search query for flat file CMS
GitHub links for FlexType, FlatPress, HTMLE, Reddit, Dakenstrom Yellow, HTML, Typesetter CMS, PicoCMS, file that is PHILE CMS

.

Diving Deeper into Flat File CMS

However, before we delve further, let’s step back and better understand the concept of a flat file content management system. The number of such systems is staggering, with over 200 in existence at one point. Most of these, though, are no longer under active development or are incompatible with more recent versions of certain elements, whether they’re specific browsers or support for HTTPS or PHP.

The Journey Ahead

That was a brief, albeit not so brief, introduction to the world of flat file content management systems. In this ongoing series, we’ll take a deep dive into one or two such CMS in each episode, allowing us to explore and understand these systems in greater detail. Perhaps along the way, we might help you decide on the CMS that best suits your blog, project, or hobby site.

For Gatha Story, my name is Amar VAS. Stay tuned for more insights into the world of CMS in the days to come.

In this ongoing series on Content Management Systems (CMS), let’s delve into the world of Flat File CMS. Previously, I mentioned Grav, Bludit, and Dattenstrom Yellow. But, there are many more players in this space. In this post, we will discuss the different Flat File CMSs, how to install them, their key features, and both their advantages and limitations.

Background

My journey with Content Management Systems began in 2018 when I decided to look beyond WordPress. Familiar CMSs like Joomla, Drupal, and Ghost were around, but I discovered a plethora of options beyond these known names. I came across CMS Critic, which listed numerous CMS options. At that time, I was also using Direct Admin on a shared hosting plan with Softaculous Installer, providing me with over 50 different CMS options. These experiences led me to explore Flat File CMSs further.

Why Flat File CMS?

Flat File CMSs appeal due to their portability. You can download the entire folder, including content, customizations, media files etc., re-upload it to a different server, make minimum customizations, and you’re ready to go. The lightweight nature of these systems is another attraction. While most of them use PHP, a few use Python or other programming languages.

In this post, we will discuss PHP-based CMSs that I’ve tested over the past three years, namely: PicoCMS, FluentXML, HTMLE, Dattenstrom Yellow, Bludit, FlexType, FlatPress CMS, and TypeMill.

What is a Flat File CMS?

A flat file content management system (CMS) essentially revolves around a folder hosted on a web server, which we’ll refer to as the ‘parent folder’. This folder contains several subfolders, each holding different scripts, templates or themes for your site, and potentially some plugins. However, the most critical part of this structure is the ‘content’ folder, which houses your media files, blog posts, and pages.

Interestingly, apart from the media files, all your content is stored as either text files or markdown files (MD). Markdown files, while technically text files, employ a distinct format known as markdown.

CMS Structure and Varieties

Regardless of the CMS type, the basic components I mentioned—configuration files, scripts, plugins, themes, and, most importantly, content—remain consistent. The hierarchy or complexity may differ depending on the CMS type. As I delved into the world of CMS, using resources like Wikipedia, G2 Crowd, Softaculous, InstallTron, CMS Critic, and various blog reviews, I started noticing patterns.

Emerging Patterns and Resources

The same names kept recurring. Additionally, I found invaluable resources on Reddit and GitHub—self-hosted and awesome self-hosting, respectively—which listed numerous flat file CMS. Combining these resources, you can easily compile a list of about twelve to fifteen different CMS in various development stages and release states.

Development Stages and Release States

Some of these systems are brand new, not even at version one—Dotenstrom Yellow, for instance. Others, like Bludit, are under active development but have yet to release a new official version. Then there are projects that once thrived with an active developer community but eventually fell apart, like Get Simple CMS and Typesetter CMS.

Project Dependencies and Future CMS

Dependency on another project is another aspect to consider. Many of these CMS are PHP-based, and as PHP transitioned from 5.6 to 7.6 and now 8 and 8.1, these CMS had to keep up, creating compatibility issues with new and old releases. Despite these challenges, some CMS I have tried are still active and will be the focus of this post. These include Dotenstrom Yellow, HTMLE, FlatPress, Flextype, Grav, and a few lesser-known ones like BatFlat and Automad, which I refer to as the ‘twins from Germany’.

Stay tuned as we delve deeper into each of these CMS.

My Experience with Flat File CMSs

I first tried Flat File CMSs on a shared hosting provider with Softaculous, and later on virtual private servers. At one point, I had servers in Germany, Australia, and the United States, all with subdomains of the same website. All three used FlatPress, or Dattenstrom Yellow, and it worked out exceptionally well, proving the scalability of these systems.

Let’s Talk About Bludit CMS

My blogging journey on Amarvyas.in began with Bludit CMS in 2019. I loved its clean interface, use of markdown, responsive design, and PHP base. You can use Softaculous, Installtron, or simply upload the installation files via FTP. They also have a good collection of themes and useful plugins like the ability to import WordPress files.

Bludit is developed by Diego, with a team of volunteer contributors. While the themes are improving day by day, the sparsity of documentation and discussion of Bludit on platforms like YouTube is a limitation.

HTMLy: An Introduction

HTMLE is an excellent choice for beginners venturing into the realm of flat file content management systems. This is largely because of its easy-to-understand dashboard and familiar default themes, such as WordPress 2015 and 2016, offering a user-friendly experience.

Features and Experience

HTMLy supports markdown and various blog types, including URL, video, image, text, gallery, and more. Its vast range of themes that can be customized and uploaded to the server ensures a speedy and responsive experience. A small but committed community supports HTMLy, and a basic set of plugins enhance its capabilities.

Limitations

However, with small communities, there’s always the risk of dependence on a single or lead developer. HTMLy, for example, saw a hiatus in active development for nearly two years. This could pose potential concerns when critical PHP changes occur, such as the release of a new, substantially different version, or when a popular version reaches its end of life. For instance, in June 2021, PHP 5.6 was being phased out, with PHP 7x gaining wider acceptance. This is a downside to bear in mind when considering HTMLE.

Let’s explore more flat file CMSs in the next segment.

Exploring Other CMSs

Exploring alternative CMSs in the non-WordPress world is an ongoing journey. Each Flat File CMS comes with its advantages and limitations, and the key is to find the one that works best for you.

Headers for Next Blog Post

PicoCMS
Blue XML
HTMLE
Dattenstrom Yellow
Grav
FlatPress
FlexType CMS

Key Learnings and Takeaways
Conclusion
Links and Resources

CMS Critic
Wikipedia page on CMS
Reddit thread on self-hosted applications
Search for ‘Flat File CMS’ on Bing or DuckDuckGo
Softaculous section on CMS
InstallTron
GitHub search for ‘Flat File CMS’
GitHub links for FlexType, FlatPress, HTMLE, Dattenstrom Yellow, Typesetter CMS, PicoCMS, PhileCMS

Flat file, CMS, I have used in the previous section we spoke about the, what are our flat file content management systems, how to install them there are advantages and limitations as well as examples of different types of CMS. In this post, I will talk about the eight or nine different content management systems, flat file CMS, that I have tested and used over the past three years, around mid 2018, I was introduced to the world of CMS, beyond WordPress, or the more popular ones, including a Joomla, and also Drupal. Make that 2017 with a shared hosting plan I had a bit. Rah, rah, re, I tested out quite a few of them and actually took a liking to some of the less resource intensive, or the lightweight, CMS, including file that’s bhi l e Pico pu XMLHTLY. Then there was, grab. Flex pipe. Flat press. Then you have type milk. Pipe set up, and a whole bunch of other cmss, some of which may have a limited following, but they are very good and design systems. The advantages of some of these CMS is number one is portability, other one, obviously, was because of the very lightweight nature of it. I first tried the installations on a variety of shared hosting environments. Next, I tried them out on VPS. So in this section we will cover each one of these content management systems with the following intentions. Number one, background or a brief history about this, CMS.

Number two, we will have, what are some of its salient features. Number three, minimum requirements as on January 2021, which is the most recent version, and what are the hardware requirements for it. Number four, where, and how you can install it. Number five. My experience with it and that is where I intend to add some flavor or some experience on my own site. Number six, some of the more popular or well known sites that use this content management system. Finally, my key takeaway. What you know what what could be in my opinion a great site that you can create or you can set up using this content management system. Let us begin with blue dead. Now, loaded, is this very blog, I must be our start in started as on uploaded CMS before I decided to move forward onto WordPress. It was not the greatest of migrations. That’s a conversation for a different day and I have partly covered it in one of my earlier blog posts. Blue that is developed by Diego and some of his other volunteer contributors, and they have come a long way, some of the themes are very interesting now. Our Abuja team, I guess, and so on. And what I really like about is the speed of performance, and it’s relatively sparse interface sparse does not mean, it’s lacking in features. However, installation can be done either by one click installer.

Or you can use composer, or you can go ahead and install it on your server through SSH access, or even by Git. And at the time of writing current version is so and so, add the link to it, add the link to installers one or two review sites that you may have come across outside maybe one or two videos. And finally, we will take a look at some of the advantages and limitations advantages would be more in the case of speed of installation is a fuse portability, etc. Limitations is again ironically portability and then exporting out, we will follow the same pattern for the other content management systems, and that will be this particular blog post or this particular series. Introduction: exploring alternative content management systems. In a non WordPress world, there are options of plenty when it comes to selecting or opting for a content management system. If we look at sites such as CMS critic, like GitHub or the Reddit self hosted threat, and also on Wikipedia, the list of content management systems.

Of course, if you run a search query on Google about what are the top content management sites, four or five distinct patterns emerge? We will see options which are from SAS providers all the way from Duda to Squarespace and Wix and Weebly. There is also Joomla other startups like then web and bookmark WordPress is our hosting specialists like now, taste WP and then also 10 Web. Like I said before, few other players who offer a one click solution for your web hosting needs. Then we have other postings, such as specialising some of them are provided by the CMS developers themselves.

And that could be around lungs alpha. That could be along the lines of Drupal and a whole bunch of others. Programming Languages wise. We have PHP, majority of them including WordPress, and then we have Node js. There is Ruby, Python. Go quite a bunch of options in this space as well, though I think majority of the sites continue to use PHP. Next we have the option of what type of hosting shared hosting on a VPS only. And then we have the SAS providers like I said before, so in all this chaos when I was looking for an alternative to WordPress, I decided to focus more on the PSP based systems for a couple of reasons number one was familiarity. Not just my own but tomorrow if I were to outsource the site management to someone rather than having something a little bit more limited in its scope, and use like ghost having a PHP based CMS made a lot of sense at least to me. I mean that quest, I shortlist actually following options. blooded H T. Emily. Job light, that Datenstrom Yellow I also tried flat press, CMS. And finally, the sixth option that really impressed me was dot clear. Type mill was another one, followed by text pattern.

And I think eight is a good enough list could have added a few more to round off to the nearest 10 Or maybe even a dozen, but all of them have their pros and cons and I’m really impressed with X pattern, very little known or very less number of manuals or how tos, etc. If one were to search on a YouTube or any of your search engine, you would keep seeing the same results again and again. Because of its limited footprint. But I think that’s not a limitation. They have been around for a very long time. And I think one of their strengths is the longevity and robustness of the platform. Not to mention the community. At some point in time. I may have one of my blogs move over to Textpattern. The problem with most of the known WordPress options is that many of the projects are led by a single developer or a very small team each team really that installed yellow and blurted out some of those examples. So the moment the developer stops work on the project, the things lie in limbo for a very long time.

It’s not gonna happen with beautiful content management system, but it’s been in a limbo for a very long time now, the beta was out but then beyond that no further development and that’s not a criticism but more of a from a risk management point of view. Having a small community having a group of developers in case things fall apart. Can you reach out to one of the developers and have them do the updates or the maintenance work for you? That would be one of my concerns, particularly as a blog starts growing. We start seeing some graphic I would not want to repeat the mistakes of the past. I started out as a WordPress blog. I use blog it for a while back to WordPress and I may continue with that CMS for some time. Or classic press for the blog because I’m more focused on the content and the speed rather than the bells and whistles at this point in time.

And when auto website will be WordPress I’m coming back to the question if not WordPress, then what would I prefer? To use? I think the answer lies somewhere in the realm of a flat file content management system. And that would mean either blood or that Datenstrom Yellow. Again, given my concerns about small projects and developer support and the other issues that come up, I may lean towards classic press as well because if I’m looking at largely a blog and not necessarily fully loaded CMS with all the bells and whistles Classicpress really stands apart obviously because of its WordPress codebase till version 4.9. But also I think the community has been growing and a lot of themes legacy themes as Sal has started calling them.

They do work well all the way up to 2020 theme and try to zero to one might be possible. And if that happens then using the 20 login things may take a different turn. still debating whether I should move this blog away from WordPress simply because of the maintenance overhead that comes up. Of course there are tools and systems to automate things from themes to plugins and beyond. Not sure that’s the path I want to take on Votel. So my first preference would be to use a CMS like classic press because still still WordPress before I move back to WordPress tomorrow, it becomes easier and it was very difficult to move out of plugins and moving into WordPress because obviously, the classes, plugin scripts etc.

Some of them did not work. My second choice would be HTML UI simply because the stock 2015 theme with some customisations works beautifully. And to the front end to the end user. It doesn’t really matter. Whether it’s called a front end of HTML E or WordPress. It’s a familiar look and feel one of the most popular themes from WordPress, between 2015 and 2016. Speaking of which, people may ask why did it not opt for our mentioned graph or some of the other content management systems and definitely not the node.js ones, including Hugo? Not my cup of tea at this point in time, they are fine CMOs and I hold them in high regard. However, I have not reached the stage where and I can call myself comfortable, proficient in Hindi or Sanskrit is called Praveen.

I’m not sure I’m Praveen yet in using these Flat file content management systems so far when I was exploring the world of content management systems for my blog or more importantly my author website, the recurring suggestions that kept coming other than WordPress, Where, Drupal, Joomla or many other systems all of which used databases. So essentially there is a MySQL database or a similar database which stores all the information that would be the author accounts, the comments by visitors, any posts that you write, pages that you create, images or any other scripts that you may have. Everything is stored in a database which the content management system picks up and then displays it to the visitor on their web browser. However, there’s a different kind of a content management system which stores all of this information in the form of flat files.

So these are essentially text files that store all this information in a different sort of a hierarchy or a structure. And flat file content management systems by their very design are very lightweight. They require far less resources compared to, let’s say, a Drupal or a WordPress or a Typo three website. And at the same time they are quite easy to manoeuvre and understand as well. I think it’s the ease of use, the speed and the convenience is the reason why flat file content management systems have really taken off recently. Ironically, the very first set of web pages that were created when the worldwide web was created were also static plane pages. They used basic HTML. Most of the flat file content management systems use some sort of a scripting language. It could be a mixture of HTML and JavaScript, as well as CSS or Content Cascading style sheets or CSS which means Cascading style sheets. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me take a step backwards and understand this very idea of a flat file content management system.

What a flat file CMS essentially does is that the files what a flat file content management system essentially involves is a folder which is hosted on a web server. So let’s call it the parent folder. It will have a series of subfolders which should include the different scripts. It will include the template, essentially the theme for your site. It may also include some plugins, but the most important factor is the content. And this includes the audio, the images, the text, the blog posts, the pages that you create, they are all stored in the content folder. Now, the best part is that all of your content, other than the media files of course is stored in the form of either text files or in a format called MD or markdown files. Well, markdown files are also essentially text files, but they use a different sort of a format called as markdown. Coming to the types of content management systems which use this flat file structure, irrespective of the type of CMS, you see the basic components that I just described, that would be the configuration files, the scripts that you may have, any plugins themes as well as most importantly, the content that you may have.

The structure or the basic format of the building blocks in this case remain the same. The hierarchy, the complexity may vary depending on the type of CMS you are looking at. As I started looking into the world of CMS using resources like Wikipedia of course, and then there was G two crowd, a lot of other resources such as subtaculars installed ron CMS critic and reviews on many blogs and also websites which talk about different content management systems. And I will add some links in the resources section. Towards end of this post I started seeing some patterns. The same names keep getting repeated again and again and again in recent times. Of course there are two valuable rather in valuable resources on Reddit and on GitHub which is they are self hosted and on GitHub is awesome self hosting. They also have a list of certain flat file content management systems. Putting all of these together you can actually come up with probably a list of twelve or 15 different CMS which are in different stages of development and also in terms of release. Now the reason why I’m qualifying it in such a way is that some of these systems are brand new.

They’re not even at version one, they are that early in the system that in some yellow could be an example of that. Then there are others which probably are under active development, but they just haven’t released a new official release yet. Blooded for example, version four, it’s a close to release candidate three as of May of 2022, but version four has not been released. If you visit their website you would still see version 3.1 or 3.2 or thereabouts. So that is the official release which happened nearly two years ago. And then you have a whole bunch of projects which were doing well at certain point in time and they had a very small group of developers, very small but very active community built around it. After a while the project just fell apart. I spoke about Blooded, the developer of Blooded earlier used to have another flat file content management system known as Nibble Blog. So they moved on, they moved on to a different hierarchy maybe and do a different project altogether and the project just fell apart after that get simple, CMS is one of them, then you have type set of CMS is another one. Fantastic resources in the flat file content management space. However, after a while the project really hit a dead end or the whole thing just dissipated and no new releases, no new developments happening, at least on the face of it that one can speak of.

The other factor was dependency on another project. A lot of these are PHP based projects and as PHP itself moved from 5.6 to 7.6 and now eight and 8.1. The catch up that a lot of these CMS had to do both in terms of catching up with the new release as well as being compatible with the previous releases. That also, I believe, began to become an issue in itself. So, quick rundown of some of the CMS that I have tried and which are still active and that’s probably will be the focus of my list that I’m talking about here, dot and Storm Yellow. Then we have HTML typemail, flat press, Flex type, graph and finally we have fewer, probably less popular ones. And I say that with a grain of salt. That’s purely because on the basis of the install base and those would be and also it’s cousin. So let me also wind up with the two twins from Germany, backflat and automatic.

This is kind of the universe that we operate in. The list is endless. In fact, at one point in time I was reading that there are close 200 plus such content management systems, majority of them. However, like I said, they’ve not been under active development or they’re not compatible with some of the more recent versions of one thing or the other. So maybe not compatible with certain browsers or may not support Https or PHP in this case. That was the quick and not so quick introduction to the world of flat file content management system. In this ongoing series, in every episode we will do a deep dive into one or possibly two such flat file CMS that will allow us to tinker around, explore, understand a little bit here and there, and maybe along the way help you decide if that is the CMS of choice if that is the CMS of choice for your blog or a project or a hobby site. Days to come. On behalf of Gatha Story. My name is Amar VAS.
Definition of Flat File CMS

A flat-file CMS is a type of content management system that stores all its content in simple text files, rather than a relational database. This allows for a simpler structure and organization, with easy file-based content management. It offers a source and database-less approach for storage and processing of content, making it ideal for simple websites and blogs. The system uses a template engine to render the content into web pages and can also include version control for managing changes to content. In this article, we will delve deeper into the concept of flat-file CMS and its features.

Benefits of Using a Flat File CMS

Flat file CMS or file-based content management system is a popular solution for creating simple websites that provide user-friendly experiences. Many businesses have opted for flat file CMS due to its many benefits such as increased security, easy backup, effortless relocation, simplicity, and no databases required.

One of the significant benefits of using a flat file CMS is its increased security. Traditional CMSs often rely on relational databases, which make them more complex and prone to malicious attacks. Flat file CMSs, on the other hand, use simple folder structures and plain text files, which have no provisions for malicious code injection, minimizes the risk of security breaches.

Another advantage of using flat file CMS is the easy backup and effortless relocation of content. With a flat file CMS, all content is stored in plain text files, making it easy to transfer content from one system to another without losing any data. Additionally, backups are also simple and straightforward with a flat file CMS, as it only requires copying the file system.

Flat file CMSs are also simpler and less prone to errors than traditional CMSs. They do not require databases to manage content, which reduces the complexity of the system, resulting in fewer errors. Additionally, because flat file CMSs use Markdown files or other easy-to-use markup languages, creating content is effortless, and content editors can focus on the quality of the content, rather than figuring out difficult publishing tools.

Flat file CMSs are faster and more portable, as they use files as a natural companion for authors. As a result, content rendering and updating is quick and easy. Plus, flat file CMSs are portable, meaning they can be hosted on any server or service that supports static files, which provides greater flexibility and freedom.

In summary, using a flat file CMS offers several benefits, including increased security, easy backup, effortless relocation, simplicity, no databases required, faster content rendering, and more portability. These benefits make flat file CMS a perfect solution for businesses and individuals looking to create elegant, simple, and highly efficient websites.
Types of Flat File Content Management Systems

Flat file content management systems (CMS) refer to a type of CMS that stores content in flat files instead of a relational database. These systems are gaining popularity among web developers due to their simplicity, speed, and security. Here’s a list of the different types of flat file content management systems available in the market today:

1. File-Based CMS – This type of flat file CMS stores content in files such as Markdown, HTML, or text files. File-based CMS is known for its simplicity and ease of use. It offers a straightforward approach to content editing and management, making it the perfect solution for small to medium-sized websites.

One popular example of a file-based CMS is Grav. It offers users a wide range of customizable themes, a user-friendly admin panel, and an easy plugin installer. Grav is most suitable for blogs, portfolios, and small websites.

2. Static Site Generators – Static site generators are designed to create websites that are incredibly fast and efficient. These CMSs do not rely on databases or server-side processing, making them an ideal choice for websites that require quick page load times. Static site generators produce static HTML pages that can be served from a CDN, reducing server load and improving website speed.

Hugo is a classic example of a static site generator. It is user-friendly, easy to install, and offers a range of templates for various website types. Hugo is suitable for developers who have basic knowledge of HTML and web development.

3. Text-Based CMS – Text-based content management systems, as the name suggests, store content in text files. While these CMSs might not be as popular as file-based or static site generators, they offer several benefits. Text-based CMSs do not require installation, making them a perfect solution for developers who need to maintain multiple websites. They are also lightweight, so they offer fast page load times.

Datenstrom Yellow is an example of a text-based flat file CMS. It offers simple folder structure, a clean presentation layer, and deliberate redundancies that protect from malicious attacks.

4. Binary File Formats – Binary file format flat file CMSs store content in binary file formats like YAML, JSON, or XML. These CMSs offer developers a way to make complex websites without the need for databases or server-side processing.

PicoCMS is an example of a binary file format flat file CMS. It offers a simple structure and customizable themes to help developers create custom websites with ease.

Overall, flat file content management systems offer a simple and efficient way to manage website content without having to deal with the complexities associated with relational databases. While each type of CMS comes with its own unique features and benefits, the choice ultimately depends on the specific needs of the website.

Examples of Popular Flat File Content Management Systems

Flat file content management systems have become increasingly popular among web developers and site owners due to their simplicity, security, and user-friendliness. In this article, we will explore some popular flat file CMSs and what sets them apart from each other.

1. Kirby CMS:

Kirby is a file-based content management system that makes use of custom fields and pages, making it perfect for building simple websites or complex web applications. The platform allows users to create and manage different types of content, and has a simple folder structure that ensures easy navigation. Notable sites built with Kirby include The Huffington Post, Time, and NASA.

2. Statamic:

Statamic is a flat-file CMS that combines the simplicity of static site generators and the flexibility of traditional CMSs. With its customizable themes and admin interface, users can easily create and manage content types like blog posts, pages, and galleries. Some popular sites built with Statamic include The Museum of Science and Industry and Buildkite.

3. Grav:

Grav is a flat-file CMS that takes the concept of flat files to another level. Built on a modern PHP stack, it allows users to create and manage different types of content using a wide range of plugins and templates. Grav is known for its modular structure and its use of markdown files. Popular sites built on Grav include the Wall Street Journal and The New York Times.

4. HTMLy:

HTMLy is an open-source flat-file CMS that is built to be simple and easy to use. It makes use of a simple database-less structure that allows for easy setup, and provides a range of custom themes and plugins that users can leverage to create a unique user experience. Notable sites built with HTMLy include Teachable.com and NomadList.com.

5. razorCMS:

razorCMS is a simple and easy-to-use flat-file CMS that is built to help users create beautiful and responsive websites and web applications. With its customizable themes and admin panel, users can easily create and manage different types of content without the need for complex database systems. Some notable sites built with razorCMS include Scuba Diving Magazine and HuffPost Australia.

In conclusion, there are many popular flat file CMSs available today, and each has its unique features and benefits. Whether you need a simple and easy-to-use system or a more complex and customizable platform, there is a wide range of options to choose from.

Advantages and Disadvantages of Using a Flat File CMS

Flat file content management systems have gained popularity in recent years due to their simplicity and convenience. Unlike traditional content management systems that rely on relational databases, flat file CMSs use plain text files to store data. In this article, we will look at the advantages and disadvantages of using a flat file CMS.

Pros of Using a Flat File CMS

As a content writer, it is essential to not only understand the competencies of every content management system but also appreciate the value they bring to the table. When it comes to flat file content management systems, there are several advantages that users can enjoy.

One of the primary benefits of using a flat file CMS is its simplicity. Unlike complex systems that require a relational database, a flat file CMS uses a simple folder structure making it easy for users to navigate and create content. This simplicity also means that it is user-friendly and requires minimal technical knowledge to set up and use.

Another advantage of using a flat file CMS is its speed. Because it doesn’t rely on a relational database, content can load faster than in complex systems. The system loads only the necessary components, making it light and fast, which contributes to a better user experience.

Flat file CMSs are also highly portable, which makes them easy to backup and move. This feature is particularly useful when users need to migrate their content to different platforms or machines. The lack of complex dependencies also means that the system is easy to install, configure, and transfer.

One of the most significant advantages of a flat file CMS is its security. Because it relies on simple text files and doesn’t require a database, flat file CMSs are less vulnerable to malicious attacks. The absence of interaction with a database minimizes the possibility of SQL injection or any other malicious attacks.

Flat file CMSs offer customizable themes that allow users to customize the appearance and functionality of their CMS. This feature is highly advantageous for creating unique and appealing websites. Additionally, flat file CMSs support version control and collaboration, making it easy to edit, iterate, and update on the go.

In conclusion, flat file CMSs are a popular solution because of their simplicity, speed, portability, security, backup and movement ease, customizable themes, version control, collaboration facilities, and updating capabilities. These qualities make flat file CMSs the perfect solution for simple websites and blogs. Therefore, if you are in search of a content management system that meets your needs, a flat file CMS might be the perfect solution for you.
Cons of Using a Flat File CMS

Flat file content management systems have gained popularity in recent years due to their minimalist functionality and simple folder structure, making them a popular choice for creating a user-friendly and straightforward website. However, despite their potential advantages, there are some potential drawbacks that come with using a flat-file CMS.

One of the significant drawbacks is the poor scalability of a flat-file CMS. As your website grows, your file structure becomes more complex, and it’s difficult to manage content efficiently. Moreover, it may not be suitable for users who require advanced features or plugins, limiting their ability to customize their website further.

Another significant challenge is that servers may need to be extended to run on a webserver due to their source code being database-less, which can be a complex process. This server-side technology may not be user-friendly and not suitable for individuals who are not technically proficient.

Despite these challenges, solutions exist for individuals who wish to use a flat-file CMS. To address these issues, it’s essential to choose the right flat-file CMS that caters to specific requirements and features. It’s also necessary to have a good understanding of code and HTML and design content types that provide a seamless user experience.

In conclusion, flat-file CMS systems are a popular solution for creating simple websites with user-friendly experiences, but they may not be suitable for more complex systems with specific requirements. By addressing the potential challenges, such as scalability, advanced features and plugins, server extensions, and user-friendliness, you can successfully navigate using a flat-file CMS.

How to Use a Flat File CMS?

Flat file CMS is a type of content management system that uses plain text files to store and manage website content, instead of relying on a database. These systems are gaining popularity due to their simplicity and ease of use. Here are some steps on how to use a flat file CMS to create and manage website content efficiently.

Step 1: Choose the Right Type for Your Project

When it comes to content management systems, flat file CMS has become an increasingly popular solution. However, with several types of flat file content management systems available, choosing the right one for your project can be overwhelming. In this article, we’ll discuss various types of flat file content management systems to help you make an informed decision.

One type of flat file content management system is a data-driven CMS. This is a popular solution for larger projects due to its scalable nature. Data-driven CMS is built on a simple folder structure where files, content, and media are stored. These folders organize data, making it easier to manage large amounts of content. Data-driven CMS also provides an admin panel for content editors to manage and publish their content efficiently.

Another type of flat file content management system is static site generators. These are great for building simple websites that prioritize user experiences and speed. Unlike data-driven CMS, static site generators do not use a database or an admin interface. Instead, they generate HTML files from plain text files, which results in faster loading times. Popular examples of static site generators include Jekyll, Hugo, and Gatsby.

Micro-publishing CMS is an ideal choice for specialized information-driven projects. This type of CMS provides a simple structure for content creation and management, making it easy to edit and publish content on the go. It also offers customizable themes, plug-ins, and markdown editors to streamline the content creation process. A popular example of micro-publishing CMS is Typemill.

Other types of flat file content management systems include file-based content management system, which stores content in flat files instead of a database. This makes it less complex to manage, and it ensures a reliable version control system. Customizable themes are also available, making it easy to customize the presentation layer of your website.

In conclusion, when choosing which type of flat file content management system to use for your project, it’s essential to consider the specific needs of your website. Data-driven CMS is a scalable solution for larger projects, while static site generators prioritize speed and user experiences. Micro-publishing CMS is perfect for specialized information-driven projects. Whatever your needs are, there is a flat file content management system out there that can meet them.

Step 4: Create Content Types & Add Editors to the System

Create Customizable Themes & Templates

Step 2: Install & Configure Your System
Utilize Version Control for Easier Updating & Collaboration

When it comes to managing content with a flat file CMS, version control is an essential tool. This feature enables you to keep track of changes made to your files. Version control not only helps to keep your content organized, but it also allows you to easily revert back to previous versions. This is especially helpful when you make a mistake or need to compare changes between different versions of your website.

Tools like Git or SVN can be used to manage version control for your content. Git and SVN are popular version control systems that can assist in managing changes in your flat file CMS. These tools allow you to create a baseline version of your content that includes everything from your database to your theme. You can make changes and commits to your content. This will help in tracking changes and also help with keeping version history. This helps in making things easier when you need to revert to an older version of your site.

When collaborating with other team members, version control is crucial in avoiding conflicts and ensures that everyone is working on the same version of the project. This is of the utmost importance in ensuring that your flat file CMS is up-to-date and error-free. When multiple team members are working on the same project, it can be difficult and confusing if everyone is not on the same page. However, with version control, it makes collaboration much more manageable. Everyone can contribute changes to the version control system, ensuring that updates are tracked and visible to everyone.

In summary, version control is essential for updating and collaborating with others in flat file CMS content management systems. This tool helps in keeping track of changes made to your content, and enables you to easily revert to previous versions if necessary. With the use of tools like Git or SVN, you can better manage version control and collaborate with other team members by avoiding conflicts and ensuring everyone is working on the same version of the project.

January 12, 2026
How to use Prompts for AI Imaging using Stable Diffusion

In this post, I will introduce you to some commands or prompts to help you create images using Stable Diffusion. (more…)

January 12, 2026
Alternatives to Canva

In this post, we will take a brief look at twenty different alternatives to the ever popular graphic design tool, Canva. We will include two or three salient points about their features. While the intention of this post is to provide a rather comprehensive list of alternatives to Canva, we do not intend to run a “popularity contest”, that is, this post does not intend to suggest which of the below options are the best alternative(s) to Canva. Each SaaS application has its own strengths and weaknesses.

Once upon a time, there was a graphic designer named Emily who was looking for alternatives to Canva. She wanted software that could help her create stunning designs, but she needed more variety. Here are ten alternatives she found:

1. **Adobe Spark** – This software offers a variety of design tools, including templates, typography, and photos. Emily found Adobe Spark to be a great alternative to Canva because of its simple and easy-to-use interface, which made it easy for her to create professional designs in no time. The software provided her with a wide range of templates, fonts, and images that she could use to create stunning designs without needing any design experience.

2. **PicMonkey** – With this software, Emily could easily add text and graphics to her photos. PicMonkey also has various filters and effects to enhance images. Emily found PicMonkey to be a great alternative to Canva because of its user-friendly interface and powerful editing tools. The software provided her with a wide range of filters and effects that she could use to enhance her images and make them look more professional.

3. **Design Wizard** – This software has a vast library of stock images, graphics, and videos that Emily could use to create designs. Emily found Design Wizard to be a great alternative to Canva because of its vast library of stock images, graphics, and videos. The software provided her with a wide range of creative elements that she could use to create unique and professional designs for her clients.

4. **Stencil** – Like Canva, Stencil has a drag-and-drop interface that is easy to use. Emily appreciated that Stencil had a library of pre-made templates and icons. She found Stencil to be a great alternative to Canva because of its user-friendly interface and pre-made templates. The software provided her with a wide range of templates and icons that she could use to create professional designs without needing any design experience.

5. **Crello** – Crello has over 12,000 templates that Emily could customize with her own images or graphics. Additionally, Crello has a feature that allows Emily to animate her designs. Emily found Crello to be a great alternative to Canva because of its vast library of customizable templates and its animation feature. The software provided her with a wide range of templates that she could customize with her own images or graphics, as well as an animation feature that allowed her to create unique and eye-catching designs.

6. **Snappa** – Snappa offers templates for social media, ads, and blog posts. Emily could also take advantage of Snappa’s library of graphics, photos, and fonts. Emily found Snappa to be a great alternative to Canva because of its user-friendly interface and its templates for social media, ads, and blog posts. The software provided her with a wide range of templates that she could use to create professional designs for her clients, as well as a library of graphics, photos, and fonts that she could use to enhance her designs.

7. **Fotor** – This software has a variety of editing tools, including cropping, resizing, and adding effects. Emily could also use Fotor’s templates to help her get started on her designs. Emily found Fotor to be a great alternative to Canva because of its powerful editing tools and its templates. The software provided her with a wide range of editing tools that she could use to enhance her images and make them look more professional, as well as templates that she could use to get started on her designs.

8. **Piktochart** – Piktochart is a software that specializes in creating infographics. Emily could easily customize pre-made templates or create her own infographics from scratch. Emily found Piktochart to be a great alternative to Canva because of its specialization in creating infographics. The software provided her with a wide range of templates that she could customize or use as a starting point, as well as powerful tools to create her own infographics from scratch.

9. **Venngage** – Similar to Piktochart, Venngage is a software that specializes in creating infographics. Emily appreciated that Venngage had a variety of chart and graph options. Emily found Venngage to be a great alternative to Canva because of its specialization in creating infographics and its variety of chart and graph options. The software provided her with a wide range of templates that she could customize or use as a starting point, as well as powerful tools to create her own infographics from scratch.

10. **Gravit Designer** – Gravit Designer is a vector graphic design software that allows Emily to create her own illustrations, logos, and icons. She could also import her own images and fonts. Emily found Gravit Designer to be a great alternative to Canva because of its powerful vector graphic design tools. The software provided her with a wide range of tools to create her own illustrations, logos, and icons, as well as the ability to import her own images and fonts.

Emily was thrilled to have found these ten alternatives to Canva. She appreciated the variety of options that each software offered and was excited to explore what each one could do. Emily started exploring each of the alternatives and found that each of them had unique features that made them stand out. She was impressed with Adobe Spark’s easy-to-use interface and professional design templates. She found PicMonkey’s filters and effects to be a game-changer for her photo editing.

Design Wizard was her go-to solution for finding stock images and videos, while Stencil’s pre-made templates helped her save time on designing from scratch. Crello’s animated designs caught her attention, and Snappa’s templates for social media, ads, and blog posts were perfect for her freelance work. Fotor’s variety of editing tools, templates, and fonts helped her create designs quickly, while Piktochart and Venngage were her favorite tools for creating infographics. Gravit Designer’s vector graphic design software was the perfect solution for creating her own illustrations, logos, and icons.

Emily was happy that she had found so many alternatives to Canva. Each software had features that suited her needs, and she could now choose the best one for each project. With these ten alternatives, Emily was confident that she could create unique and professional designs for her clients.

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There are several alternatives to Canva that offer similar features and functionality. Here are ten options to consider:

Adobe Spark: Adobe Spark is a design tool that allows you to create graphics, web pages, and videos. It includes a variety of templates, fonts, and images, and offers easy integration with Adobe Creative Cloud.

PicMonkey: PicMonkey is a graphic design and photo editing tool that allows you to create collages, logos, and social media graphics. It includes a range of templates, fonts, and effects, and offers easy integration with social media platforms.

Piktochart: Piktochart is an infographic and presentation tool that allows you to create engaging visual content. It includes a variety of templates and icons, and offers easy sharing and collaboration features.

Easil: Easil is a design tool that allows you to create graphics for social media, print, and web. It includes a range of templates, fonts, and graphics, and offers easy integration with popular platforms like Instagram and Facebook.

Figma: Figma is a collaborative design tool that allows you to create interfaces, wireframes, and prototypes. It offers real-time collaboration and commenting features, and is accessible from any device.

DesignBold: DesignBold is a design tool that offers a range of templates and graphics for creating flyers, banners, and social media posts. It includes easy-to-use drag-and-drop functionality and a library of free stock images.

Crello: Crello is a graphic design tool that allows you to create social media posts, ads, and animated designs. It includes a variety of templates and graphics, and offers easy sharing and collaboration features.

Snappa: Snappa is a graphic design tool that allows you to create graphics for social media, blogs, and ads. It includes a range of templates and graphics, and offers easy-to-use drag-and-drop functionality.

Venngage: Venngage is an infographic and presentation tool that allows you to create engaging visual content. It includes a variety of templates and icons, and offers easy sharing and collaboration features.

Adobe Illustrator: Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor that allows you to create logos, illustrations, and typography. It includes a range of powerful design tools, and offers seamless integration with other Adobe Creative Cloud apps.

These are just a few examples of the many alternatives to Canva available for creating graphics and visual content. When choosing a tool, consider factors such as ease of use, features, and pricing to ensure it meets your needs and fits within your budget.

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Graphic Design tools that are alternatives to Canva

1. Adobe Creative Cloud Suite

2. GIMP

3. Inkscape

4. Gravit Designer

5. Vectr

canva, crello, graphic design tools, social media posts, AI images

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In today’s digital age, graphic design has become more important than ever before. With the rise of social media platforms, businesses and individuals are competing for attention like never before. In this highly competitive environment, having an eye-catching design can be the difference between success and failure. Canva, with its easy-to-use interface and extensive library of templates, has long been the go-to tool for non-designers and professional designers alike. However, with its paid features and limitations on customization, it may not be suitable for everyone. Fortunately, there are a variety of alternatives to Canva that offer unique features and benefits. In this blog post, we explore some of the best graphic design tools that are alternatives to Canva. We will look at the features offered by each tool, price, and how they compare to Canva in terms of ease of use and design flexibility. Whether you’re a business owner, marketer, or designer looking for a new tool to add to your toolkit, this post is

1. Don’t have a Canva subscription? No worries, try these alternatives!

Are you tired of hearing about Canva every time you want to create stunning social media posts or other graphics? Don’t worry, there are plenty of other graphic design tools out there that you can use. While Canva might be a popular option, it can also be quite pricey, especially if you don’t use it enough to justify the cost. Luckily, there are other alternatives to Canva that don’t require a subscription or a hefty price tag. One such alternative is Crello, which offers a variety of design templates and AI images that are perfect for social media posts and other graphic design projects. So, don’t limit yourself to just Canva. Check out these other graphic design tools and who knows, you may even find a new go-to tool!

2. Check out Adobe Spark for easy-to-use templates and stock images.

If you’re a fan of Canva and looking for other graphic design tools to try out, Adobe Spark may be just what you need. With easy-to-use templates and access to a vast collection of stock images, this platform makes creating social media posts and other designs quick and effortless. And not to worry if you’re intimidated by designing from scratch – Adobe Spark offers AI-generated images to add a creative flair to your work. Whether you’re a seasoned designer or new to graphic design tools, Adobe Spark is definitely one to check out for your next project. Plus, with competitors like Crello and many other emerging options, it’s worth exploring all of the available graphic design tools to see which one works best for you.

3. Inkscape is a free vector-based design software for creating logos and illustrations.

Looking for a free and powerful graphic design tool to create unique logos and illustrations? Look no further than Inkscape! It’s an excellent alternative to Canva and other popular graphic design tools like Crello, offering a range of features to make your designs stand out. Whether you’re looking to create social media posts, eye-catching logos, or custom illustrations, Inkscape has everything you need to bring your ideas to life. Plus, with its intuitive interface and powerful AI image functionalities, you can be sure that your final designs will look sleek and professional. So why not give Inkscape a try today and see how it can transform your graphic design game?

4. For a more robust program, try Affinity Designer with advanced features for print and digital design.

If you’re a graphic designer who desires more advanced features than those offered by Canva or Crello, you might want to consider Affinity Designer. This cutting-edge graphic design tool offers a variety of features that can help you create print and digital designs on an entirely different level. With Affinity Designer, you can experiment with sophisticated vector graphics that allow you to create crisp, clean designs. This platform features a powerful pen and node system that can enable you to draw intricate shapes with ease. It also offers precise typography tools and the ability to use multiple artboards at once. For a graphic designer, Affinity Designer can be a great tool when creating social media posts or when using AI images to create advanced designs. Therefore, if you’re seeking a more robust graphic design tool, consider Affinity Designer.

5. Piktochart offers a drag-and-drop interface for creating infographics and presentations.

Hey there, fellow designers! Are you looking for an alternative to Canva for creating eye-catching social media posts, presentations, and infographics? Look no further than Piktochart! This awesome graphic design tool offers a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface that makes it easy to create stunning visuals. With Piktochart, you can create beautiful infographics and presentations in a matter of minutes that are perfect for sharing on social media. Additionally, you can use AI images to enhance your designs and make them stand out even more. So, if you’re looking for a versatile and intuitive design tool, give Piktochart a try and see how it can take your graphic design skills to the next level!

In conclusion, Canva may be one of the most popular graphic design tools out there, but it’s not the only option for those seeking to create beautiful designs. Platforms such as Adobe Spark, PicMonkey, and Desygner offer unique features and capabilities that make them worthwhile alternatives to consider. Depending on your specific design needs and preferences, one of these options may be a better fit than Canva. By exploring these alternatives, graphic designers can expand their toolkit and create even more visually stunning designs.

January 12, 2026