New CMS Makes Creating and Managing Smaller Websites a Snap

This post is part of Mashable’s Spark of Genius series, which highlights a unique feature of startups. The series is made possible by Microsoft BizSpark.. If you would like to have your startup considered for inclusion, please see the details here.Name: PagelimeQuick Pitch: PageLime is a hosted CMS for designers. It allows you to manage assets on your site by logging in to a web app that’s hosted on its servers.Genius Idea: Pagelime is a simple CMS with a graphical interface that can easily hook into websites created with PHP, Java, Ruby, ASP or just straight XHTML/CSS. The system makes it easy for designers to create sites, while making content regions editable by clients. The new iPhone app lets designers and clients access many of the Pagelime backend features on the go.As we’ve noted in the past, a lightweight CMS can be a great fit for small business users who want a simple website, without necessarily needing the hassle or complexity of a more extensive content management tool.This is exactly the market segment that Pagelime is targeting. To be more specific, Pagelime targets the website designers who are asked to build these more simple client sites. Pagelime is a hosted CMS and it works by connecting to an existing domain and web server. By adding in CSS classes to designated elements of your site’s pages, you can make those blocks editable in a WYSIWYG editor hosted on Pagelime. Likewise, you can also enable features like image galleries, manage the SEO settings on a page and add server-side includes.

This ends up being a very nice tool for web designers who want to deliver a solution to a customer, without having to worry about either customizing or building a CMS. Pagelime has a variety of pricing options — starting with a free plan that lets you create three different sites. For $19 per month, users can create up to 50 sites and use Pagelime more as a white label service, with their own logo, colors, domain and various reselling tools. For $69 per month, a user can create unlimited sites and designate an unlimited number of administrators.Pagelime recently released its first mobile app, Pagelime CMS for iPhone [iTunes link]. Pagelime’s iPhone app isn’t intended as a replacement for the web app, but it does allow designers and their clients to extend the Pagelime platform. Users can add and edit pages or templates, make changes to editable areas, preview and publish changes, all from the app.

We think Pagelime has an interesting approach to content management, especially for smaller sites and for designers who don’t want to spend too much time dealing with backend code. If you’re looking at an alternative solution for maintaining or creating smaller websites, Pagelime is worth a try.What are your favorite lightweight content management tools? Let us know.