SPIP is an open-source, free publication system on the Internet, mainly targetted at individuals, informal groups and non-profit organizations. SPIP allows contributive writing and managing of websites having a magazine-like structure (i.e. articles and short stories contained in nested sections), while not needing any HTML skills (except for defining the layout templates). There are two kind of registered users : writers (who can submit articles and short stories, and comment pending submissions) and administrators (who validate submissions, manage the site structure and configuration…). Every task, including installation, is done through a Web-based, user-friendly interface ; only the writing of templates needs some technical learning. Writers can use convenient typographic and presentation shortcuts in their texts so as to make them ready to publish without any particular computer skills. The public part of the site as well as the back-office include a forum system to add comments to articles and short stories. A two-level cache system in the public site keeps the amount of resources used on the server very low. A lightweight fulltext indexation and search engine is also integrated, which incurs no noticeable slowdown when enabled.
