Flat File Blogging with FlatPress

If you’re into blogging and host your own blog, you are aware of the need for MySQL databases when you install most blogging platforms, and this is because most blogging programs, and indeed most content management systems store their data in a database. This is generally not a problem because most web hosts offer MySQL databases. But there are situations where you may not have or want to use a database.

Flatpress is a standard-compliant multi-lingual extensible blogging engine which does not require a database to work. Better yet, it’s open source. FlatPress stores all of its content on text files and therefore you don’t need a MySQL database. Installing it is a breeze, and you can get several themes to work with. Theming is done with Smarty and PHP, and the Wiki on the official Flatpress site has some useful information on this and other topics. There are a good number of plugins available, including Akismet, Categories, Calender, etc. Flatpress also has the ability to use widgets using the blockparser plugin.

All in all, FlatPress looks like it’s worth exploring, and is something I will be looking at and playing with more.

Have you used or do you use FlatPress? Please share your thoughts and experiences with us.