Are my requirements easily met only by PHP, or am I benefiting from something like CMS?

Question

I decided to hone my minimal web interface (and help a friend) by adding some components for a simple site to shared hosting (1 and 1).

Currently, the main functionality of the site is to simply store and download weekly ~ 20-30-minute audio files along with some data about them, such as author, date, name, etc.

It would be prudent for me to implement something to handle this using PHP (this is what I have) and a database for storing file paths and other information, but I understand that since I need authentication before than letting anyone upload or edit this will require me to re-implement what, in my opinion, was done hundreds of times earlier.

For a simple application like this, I feel that a full CMS will be redundant. Are there existing tools for easily performing tasks such as authentication? I would not like to reinvent the wheel in a bad and uncertain way, but I also do not want to drown in the days of documentation to figure out how to bend, for example. WordPress for my simple app.

What would be a good way to do this?

Thanks! Any directions are welcome! =)

Answer 1

CakePHP will probably do what you want, after reading the tutorial you will be able to configure something very fast.

http://cakephp.org/

And with authentication in CakePHP

http://book.cakephp.org/view/1250/Authentication

Cake will also customize the user interface on the BREEZE database. Incredibly worth the tool.

Answer 2

There are frameworks and documentation for specific parts of your application. For example, you can implement authentication using OpenID (just like SO!)

Answer 3

erm .... how long is a line fragment?

FWIW, I first installed a copy of dokuwiki to use as a very simple CMS for some static content, and then found that I could easily insert PHP code into it; I usually maintain the PHP file elsewhere and:

<php> include('path/to/some/code.php'); </php> 

(php tags are Dokuwiki tags for marking PHP code). Since then, I have used it as the basis for some very complex applications.

Compared to the other CMS I worked with, you need to configure, configure, and add your own code.

And unlike most frameworks, it provides authentication, navigation management and account management tools, as well as templates, SEO, version control ....