In the early days of online publishing, RubyStudio's founders identified a critical gap: content management systems built for bloggers, not publishers. WordPress and Movable Type dominated the landscape in 2004, but neither was designed for the messy, collaborative, non-linear reality of how stories actually get made — writers drafting while designers commission art, editors revising while fact-checkers work in parallel, all of it moving toward publication at once.

So we built our own.

Drawing on our editorial and publishing backgrounds, we developed SmallBlock CMS — a fully customizable content management framework built around the real workflows of real publishing teams. SmallBlock supports multiple content types (long-form, short-form, visual essays, graphic stories) and multiple content creators (writers, editors, designers, artists) working simultaneously within their own defined roles and permissions. Anyone can publish. No programming knowledge required. Administrators set the rules, guardrails, and access levels for user groups, user types, and individual contributors.

Together with ListIt — our scheduling and task management app that assigns work, sends reminders, and keeps everyone's to-do lists in sync — SmallBlock CMS gives publishers the tools to manage the entire editorial process remotely, and gives creators the freedom to focus on what they do best.

SmallBlock CMS has powered some of the most respected publications in the country, including the Harvard Law Review, the Poetry Foundation and Poetry Magazine, Design Observer, Yale's Environment 360, Yale Law School's Legal Affairs, New York University's School of Journalism, and the Washington Square Post.

For more information about SmallBlock CMS, contact [email protected], or read through our technical documentation.