AECMS, the adroit e-commerce content management system, began as an answer not to a question but to a series of exclamations by a conservative indi author: “My Wordpress site is down! … Oh, goodness, these plugins are expensive! … Wordpress sucks! I’m going to make my own CMS!”

So I did. I designed a simple but functional, reasonably attractive CMS to host, originally, indi author web pages. It provides easy blog and page creation, media embeds, and a shop with native support for DRM-free digital product (read: ebook) sales and delivery. It automates ebook purchase, customization, and download, plus (taking a cue from popular indi author paid platforms) gives your customer an easy wizard for direct-to-kindle delivery.

The CMS is free to use for hard-scrabble indi authors and anyone else who wants to self-host a blog and web shop but doesn’t want to mess with the complexity and bloat of Wordpress. I maintain it in my spare time, so donations are mighty welcome.

How to use it for your own website, you ask? Go to the github site (https://github.com/WCCollier/AECMS) and follow the user’s guide to get yourself a cheap or free web host service, and then deploy the CMS directly to it. The CMS will walk you through its own setup from there. It’s a little technical if you’ve never deployed a dockerfile, but the owner’s manual will walk you through it.