Frog is an ideal CMS for users who are not afraid to get down and dirty with a little hands on development. While it doesn’t necessarily require that you learn PHP, it does help that you pay attention and expand your knowledge of the language if you want to make the most of the platform. Aside from that, Frog is straightforward and relatively easy to manage for the savvy user.
Features
Frog is pretty basic in terms of features. The most notable features are related to the flexibility of page design. Everything from the homepage to articles and beyond are organized in hierarchical fashion. Pages are easy to move around and snippets of code can be added to provide added flexibility where needed. Frog offers a built-in file manager, but has no viable facility for managing images. Luxuries such as this must be provided via plugins.
Ease of Use
The major selling point to the Frog CMS is simplicity. It offers built-in drag-and-drop functionality that makes content creation a breeze. This feature helps you save a lot of time and can actually add a little fun to your project. Image resizing is also made easy, provided you have installed the free plugin that enables this functionality.
Content Management
Frog gives you a default administrative back-end that includes two tabs: plugins and settings. The plugins tab offers a menu of all the plugins you have installed, including the most recently installed version, and options that allow you to easily enable or disable it. The setting tab allows you to choose from two administrative themes, which Frog considers layouts, 20 different language options, an administrative site title, and various default options. If your website is configured to receive comments, a comments tab will be automatically added to your administrative back-end.
Security
Frog does not offer a state of the art security system. In fact, the only security features built into the software are granular privileges. However, this is a great security to have. The permission system allows you to create groups, assign users and establish privileges for different users from the menu in the administrative panel. This makes it simple for a user to delegate work regardless of their experience or the technical aspects involved.
Community Support
Frog is an open-source CMS, so the only support you get for the software is provided by the community. There is help online in the public forum where both developers and users hangout. Unfortunately, nothing is guaranteed here as community support can be less than desirable depending on the situation. Right about now, the lack of support is the biggest knock on the Frog CMS, but hopefully this changes as the project progresses and the community grows.
Final Thoughts
Frog isn’t necessarily the complete CMS that will meet all of your needs, but it is serviceable for many of them. The software is small, lightweight and enforces good design and development practices. While it is not the solution for everyone, it makes a fine choice for the niche market of developers who need to build a content rich site for themselves, or clients.
