I've used DokuWiki as a CMS for several website projects. The default theme
is no great shakes, but you can theme it to look like anything and there
are hundreds of plugins. I think the syntax it uses is much friendlier than
that used by Mediapress.

http://dokuwiki.org/

I've also been curious about Octopress. Nominally a blogging layer for
Jekyll, with the new version I think it can probably work as a CMS. It uses
Markdown as the syntax.

http://octopress.org/


On Mon, Apr 29, 2013 at 11:22 AM, Wilhelmina Randtke <[log in to unmask]>wrote:

> Has anyone worked with file based CMSes,and do you have a recommendation
> for one with simple backend?
>
> One of the issues with the CMS is that databases don't make sense to people
> without background in them.  I want to look at static file based CMSes with
> the goal of finding something that is easier to write instructions on doing
> maintenance and backups for than is a database based CMS.
>
> -Wilhelmina Randtke
>