Back-end working with Smarty

Question

CMS

Hello. Maybe I phrased the question wrong, sorry.
In general, I'm very tired of CMS, I'm tired that you can't insert some nonsense in any place with a simple line of html code. As a layout designer, they simply don’t let me work with CMS (such as Joola, WP, Drupal, Bitrix), without knowledge of php I don’t want to climb, the methods they offer are very often not exhaustive.
I had experience developing in the Front-End framework, with the Smarty template engine, then some kind of admin panel was trained for this. And I really liked it. Free, convenient, mobile.
In total, it’s simple, is there anything that allows you to freely, custom layout, but at least with basic CMS functions (sending email, comments).
And this is something, it is desirable that it can be used without special knowledge of php.
Thank you.

Answer 1

Sorry for the offtopic. But knowledge of PHP will bring you benefits by several orders of magnitude more. Why do you need a smart crutch? essentially the same php, but with curly braces and much less features; people write wrapper plugins to somehow compensate for the lack of functions, structures and other things.
In addition, you deliberately limit the number of projects that you could potentially work on. You will not suggest to the employer to rewrite the application in a format, so that it would be convenient for a tired layout designer to insert nonsense.
It’s not at all clear why a layout designer should insert some kind of nonsense in a prototype? The layout designer's task is to make a page prototype in html + css from the layout. everything else (substituting variables, displaying information in loops, etc.) is done by developers. If you are a developer working with PHP CMS, then not knowing PHP is nonsense,
IMHO, it's time to add the profession of layout designer to the Red Book. I do not argue in the era of printing, a layout designer is a king and a god. But in our 21st century, any front-end developer will make a template no worse than a coder, or maybe even better. Times have changed, the requirements for job candidates are growing, it’s not enough to know html + css alone, you need at least superficial knowledge in the entire web development stack. do not fool around - learn php

Answer 2

try piecrust or something like that.
If you know js you can try nodejs

Answer 3

In any case, you cannot do without a server language.
Front-end is good, but nothing will really work for you without the same PHP, you need to store information somewhere. The only way out is to use third-party APIs, but again, you can’t build a full-fledged service.
So either find a CMS that suits you, or learn PHP or something like that, or just retrain as a Front-end developer.
Another option is to force the programmer to write an API, in this case I recommend studying some kind of JS framework and you will be happy.