Osmek, A Hosted Web CMS To Take On Squarespace

By Jason Campbell (@jemorycampbell) May 27, 2010

Welcome Osmek, A Hosted Web CMS with a Twist I have given up trying to figure out if there is a limit to the number of products that can co-exist in the hosted web cms landscape. Just when you think the category is saturated, along comes an offering like Osmek looking to differentiate itself from the myriad of competitors.

What's an "Osmek"?

Osmek is the brainchild of Matthew McCloskey, founder and Principal at Kemso, LLC, and is a web-based content management system that leverages the cloud for content storage.

If you are thinking: "That's original. I liked this product better the first time I saw it when it was called Wordpress.com", hang on just a second. Osmek does provide a web-based content entry and content management interface, but unlike Wordpress.com or Drupal Gardens, you are not locked into a specific theming pattern.

OK, So How is Osmek Different?

Osmek supports the ability for all the content that is entered via the content entry interface to be published in one of four formats (JSON, XML, HTML, or Serialized PHP) or developers can leverage built-in template responses.

In other words, users can enter content via http://cms.osmek.com and then a developer can build a site that "pulls" that content down from the cloud and displays it according to the users' specifications.

The content is made available to the end-user version of the site via the Osmek API. This API is language neutral and can be accessed from across the internet. Currently, there is a client-side library for interacting with the API available in PHP. Libraries in other languages will be arriving soon.

If you are thinking: "Wait a minute, that sounds like a publishing system", then you would be correct. Albeit an extremely lightweight publishing system.

How Does Osmek Work?

The foundation of content management within Osmek is the usage of section modules. For each "section" that is created, content creators can choose from 10 section templates:

And there's more. After a content creator sets up the necessary section modules, said modules can then be extended using Osmek's system wide core functionality:

Comments: converts a Multi Entry section module into a blog;
Subscriber: allows content to be shared;
Tags: organizes content by keyword;
Flag: adds another level of content classification beyond just tags;
File: allows files of any format to be attached to any item in a section;
Image: allows images of any format to be attached to any item in a section;
Custom fields: create a field above and beyond what is provided by the section;
Media Vault: file and images uploaded to an account are stored here.

Now that you know what tools are available, here are a few examples of how to use those tools:

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