from snews website:

sNews is a completely free, standards compliant, PHP and MySQL driven Content Management System. sNews is extremely lightweight, simple and customizable. It’s easy to install, and easy to use via a simple web interface. sNews consists of only one core engine file, one independent template file and its accompanying CSS stylesheet file, plus an .htaccess file that makes all URLs search engine friendly.

this is my initial review / impression of this cms product. v1.7.

it is a very small and lightweight package. download size for v1.7 is 49kB. if not the smallest out there, it’s the smallest of cms packages i’ve tried.

there’s no web-based installation. but it’s very simple. just follow instructions. you need to manually create a database and run the sql file (in sql/ subdirectory) to create tables and initial data, edit the db info in snews.php.

this is a single-user system. there’s a multi-user system (also from the same download page) but i’ve yet to try it.

there aren’t many add-ons and mods. they all require modifications to the core file snews.php, and even the core functions.

note that mods in snews is not modules as other cms.

you have to know what you’re doing. make one mistake, you need to start all over again. if there are modifications to the core file in new releases, you have to do the work again.

there’s no theme / skin selection. change of the look involves modifying the main index.php file and css files. once again, you need to know what you’re doing.

because of its simplicity, it’s good for a simple website with static pages and latest news (blogs).

i’m yet to explore about adding customized features.