SIPS v0.2.4
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SIPS is the Simple Internet Publishing System.

It's a web based system for publishing news stories, and it will in later
versions have options for letting users discuss these stories. It also has
an integrated search/link indexing system.

You may in more than one way be reminded of similar systems like Slash
(<URL:http://www.slashcode.org/>) and Squishdot (<URL:http://www.squishdot.org/>).
This is obviously because SIPS is highly inspired by such systems, and indeed,
SIPS should be categorized as a "weblog" system.

What makes SIPS "simple", is also what distinguishes it from those other
systems. SIPS uses the plain file system on the server for storing stories,
discussions and everything else as plain text files. The other systems all
depend heavily on various database servers. However, not all ISPs offer these
for less than a lot of money. This prevents many people from setting up their
own "weblogs".

However, more and more people these days have access to web servers that can
run PHP scripts (<URL:http://www.php.net/>). This is what SIPS takes advantage
of -- SIPS is written in 100% PHP.

SIPS will always remain fairly simple, because of the obvious limitations
of not using an database server. However, you should find SIPS a _lot_ more
comfortable than editing your own HTML files! :-)

SIPS aims to be
   * easy to set up
      - Copy the files, customize the configuration file and the default theme,
        give the correct permissions, and you're go!
   * easy to customize for webmasters
      - Supports multiple themes with a powerful and intuitive template
        system -- your SIPS site can have whatever look you want, and if you
        know HTML, you can author SIPS themes!
   * easy to customize for your users
      - Users can select from the themes you make available, select their
        local timezone, filter out uninteresting topics, select which
        info boxes they want...
   * intuitive for all users
      - Administrators get a comprehensive admin section, users gets full
        control over their profiles
   * easy to maintain
      - Requires only minimal maintanence so you can concentrate on posting
        interesting stories ;-)
   * stable
      - Less bloat, Open Source and clean design

SIPS is free software licensed under the GNU General Public License. It was
developed because we needed something simple for our weblog at
<URL:http://quit.net/>, and it just grew from there. The system has been
deployed full time at quit.net since December 1999 with no major
catastrophes. ;)

Most of sips (c) 2000 by Haakon Nilsen <haakon@nilsen.com>. Also see CREDITS.
