WTF is GLEW-CMS?

You're looking at it... well, sort-of.

GLEW-CMS is the software which runs this Web site. When you click on an internal link, GLEW-CMS looks up the page you've requested, pulls its content from a database, applies HTML markup, generates and inserts various items such as the header and menus, and sends the end result to your browser. GLEW-CMS also allows me to create and edit content through a Web-based interface, enabling me to maintain the site from any computer with a Web browser.

Basic principles

IMAGE: The GLEW-CMS file upload utility, as of January 2007
The GLEW-CMS file upload utility, as of January 2007

Pages are stored in the database as plaintext with basic human-readable markup. The markup format I employ is designed to be as simple and natural as possible, in order to avoid hindering the creative process. If you've ever edited Wikipedia, you are likely familiar with this sort of markup scheme; however, I feel that the format employed by GLEW-CMS, while superficially very similar, is somewhat more logical and user-friendly. Functions such as image embedding, linking, etc. are handled in a largely automated manner.
When I am logged in, an "Admin Bar" appears on each page and allows easy access to administrative functions. The Control Panel and its sub-pages allow me to adjust settings, manage content, view statistics, etc. An image upload utility accepts uploaded images, resizes them for on-page display, and allows basic transformations (rotation, etc.) to be applied.
The layout of a page is defined by the "master sheet" it is linked to, while the specific page content is defined in the page record itself. A master sheet generally contains various static content blocks, as well as a page content block and dynamic content items. "Content chunks" allow for replication of content across multiple pages and master sheets, and dynamic functionality can be expanded simply by dropping user-defined PHP files into a "modules" directory. All content, except for images and downloadable files, is stored in a MySQL database and edited by means of GLEW-CMS's built-in editing tools.

IMAGE: The GLEW-CMS page editor, as of January 2007
The GLEW-CMS page editor, as of January 2007

Eww, plaintext editing?

Most modern CMSs now have a pretty WYSIWYG ("what you see is what you get") editor which makes editing pages as easy (and as destructive to good editing habits) as using a basic word processor. For most people, this is preferable. The problem here is that WYSIWYG editing puts too much emphasis on presentational controls, and this can distract the author from what is most important: high-quality, well-structured content. In addition, WYSIWYG editors (especially in the hands of novice users) tend to generate HTML markup that is bloated and semantically inconsistent.
The GLEW-CMS strategy allows me to maintain stylistic and structural consistency across the entire site, and to quickly adjust "look and feel" globally instead of having to fiddle with each individual page. It also results in HTML output which is relatively lean, semantically correct, and compatible with a wide range of output media – try viewing this site with a user-defined stylesheet, or none at all, and notice that it's still pretty comfortable to use (albeit quite plain).

Gonna release it?

GLEW-CMS is something I've created for my own use and personal satisfaction. Although it is designed to be modular and flexible enough to support a variety of applications, at the moment, it exists solely to manage my own Web site. When it gets to the point where I feel I will not be too embarrassed if somebody sees my source code, I may release it for use by anyone who is interested in using or further developing it. Then again, there are already several quite solid content-management systems out there (Plone and Drupal being notable examples), so I'm not sure why anyone would want to use GLEW-CMS in the first place...