What is sNews, and why do we use it? This is a question I get more often than not—usually from fellow designers and the like, people who have been spoonfed the notion that WordPress is basically the only worthy CMS to use if you’re going to do a substantial amount of site editing yourself. (It isn’t.)

To answer the first question, sNews is a lightweight CMS. It uses a limited set of files (counting the database SQL file, the whole sNews package consists of 6 operation files and a couple of files for reading only), its required dataset (the SQL data required to run sNews) has a miniscule footprint and you can use literally any site design you like for an sNews site (it just needs to be spiced up with a few sNews-specific PHP functions).

sNews is not comparable to WordPress, it’s in a completely different category of content management systems, but that doesn’t mean that it’s an inferior system. Most of the things you can do with WordPress, you can do equally well with sNews. In many cases you can do it easier than with WordPress, but you need more than “next to no” skills in HTML and PHP in order to make it bend to your will.

WordPress –and comparable systems (Joomla, Typo3, Drupal, MODx et al)– all have a large ecosystem of plugins and themes/templates that enables literally anyone to use them. sNews is more of a developer’s tool, a base platform to build on and modify to fit your own needs, which is partly why a similar ecosystem never really has sprung up around sNews. At least not to date.

So why do we use it? Because it’s bloody easy to use. We’re not experts on PHP or Javascript or MySQL operations; we have rudimentary PHP skills, good enough Javascript knowledge and a good grasp of HTML and CSS. We make a living designing stuff, like websites, and building a website to run on sNews is so bloody simple anyone who’s ever built a website with HTML and CSS can do it. A five-year-old can do it, with the right attitude and basic skills.

And that’s another “why do we use it”. The fun and charm of DIY, which should never be sneered at. It may be comfortable to be able to go to a template store and get a template or two for your CMS, with a plugin or two, and get it running on your site through changing just a few parameters in the Admin panel, but there’s no comparing with the exhilaration you experience when making your first few changes in the CMS core, run it and it does exactly what you wanted it to do.

sNews is a small, lightweight, full-featured and efficient CMS. But it’s not for everyone.

When you figure out how it works, how you can bend it to your will, however—it’s loads more fun to use than most of the bigger systems (we know, we’ve tried most of them) and most of the equally small and lightweight ones as well. Really. It is.

Plus it has a really friendly user forum.