CraftCMS vs. WordPress vs. other CMSs

[userAW]

We're considering a new CMS for our huge 10-20,000 page site. We are not currently using any CMS, but have individual html pages with the content embedded(!).

Our site is mostly 'regular' content types, with a few discussion boards and some document handling. We also have a number of news sections/blogs and some profile directories.

We have few developers with limited coding skills and even fewer coders on the team. We've considered WordPress (which we're already using for a few sites) and also CraftCMS. CraftCMS seems more fitting to our needs because it's flexible and lean; we're impressed with what we've seen so far but are concerned that it's not open-source and that it's so new. WordPress seems cumbersome to the coding developers as much of the system is 'out of the box' and requires loading lots of plugins and things that you don't 'need' for a page.

Are there other similar CMSs that people can recommend for us to consider? Please don't tell me about your favorite CMS; please DO tell me about a CMS that you know of that may fit our needs. Comments on the CMSs mentioned above in the context of our needs are welcomed as well.

Thank you.

[brandonkelly]

> CraftCMS seems more fitting to our needs because it's flexible and lean; we're impressed with what we've seen so far but are concerned that it's not open-source and that it's so new.

Hi, I’m the Founder & CEO of Pixel & Tonic, the team behind Craft CMS. I’m obviously biased, but if your only concerns with Craft are that it is proprietary and relatively new, I’d like to attempt to ease those concerns :)

Yes the actual Craft application logic is proprietary, but all of the code is “open source” in that it’s not obfuscated in any way, and the majority of the code is in fact FOSS, including Yii, Twig, Guzzle, jQuery, and several smaller scripts. We contribute to many of them, and if we can create a business model that supports it, someday we’d even like to make Craft itself FOSS.

Which brings me to a second point, which is that unlike most CMS projects (and open source projects in general), Craft is made by a dedicated team of developers. We’re funded entirely from Craft CMS (and Craft Commerce) sales, with no VC/angel funding. So we’re highly incentivized to keep making Craft better every day, and keep offering great support. Our business is stable, we’re profitable, and revenue is rising steadily. We’ll still be around in 10 years :)

And as to it being new, well, it’s not really that new anymore. 1.0 came out in early 2013, it’s had over 240 updates (see the changelog – https://craftcms.com/changelog), and it’s generally considered to be one of the most bug-free CMSes out there. And it is being used by thousands of companies and organizations, from small boutiques to global brands like The Associated Press, Netflix, Oakley, Mixmag, and Wired. You can read about a few of those projects here: https://craftcms.com/news/case-studies

That’s my spiel, but feel free to AMA if you have any questions :)

[marcusneto]

I've known Brandon for close to 10 years. I'll also state that Brandon and his team are some of the most competent programmers I know. He was easily one of the top developers of add-ons for ExpressionEngine before starting Craft. His dedication and customer service are top notch and he, in a very jobs-ian way, seems to know what developers need before they even ask for it.

Craft will be around for a long time. Open Source projects see higher adoption rates because hosting companies have 1-click installers for them. But if you look at high quality, high traffic sites the playing field is much more evenly spread.

Anyway, buy with confidence. Brandon doesn't know I am posting this. He did not ask for this endorsement. But I love what he is doing and would easily recommend it to anyone looking for a flexible system that is easy for clients to use

[ryanbattles]

I second everything Marcus just said. I have been using Brandon's tools (plugins and CMS) since 2008, and have consistently been impressed with the quality and attention to detail that he and his team give to each release.

Just look at "craftcms" in Google Trends and you'll see a nice trajectory of community interest and involvement moving forward: https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=craftcms&cmpt=q&tz=E...

[simonswiss]

+1000 for this!

Brandon and the Pixel & Tonic team are wonderful developers and human beings. They have a true care for their product. The community around CraftCMS is very friendly, helpful and empowering.

You can't go wrong with CraftCMS. I found my happy CMS ecosystem :)

[33degrees]

Just wanted to say, I've been taking a look at your demo and I'm quite impressed with the flexibility and level of polish Craft offers. I'll definitely consider it next time I'm in need of a CMS for a client!

[josh_angell]

I would like to echo what Brandon has said and can highly recommend Craft not just because it's an awesome, flexible CMS (and it is) but because it is stable and extraordinarily well supported.

Out of the box it performs well when compared with other CMSs (I can't find the stats right now) and for the majority of sites can be used without needing any third-party plugins. However, if you do need to do something more custom than a CMS will generally allow you Craft gives you a clean plugin architecture to work within. Plugins essentially take the form of small apps that look much like a Laravel app.

Whilst all that is great there are two things that really make it my choice for day-to-day development: the community and the support from Pixel & Tonic. Regardless of if you have one site or 100, stellar support comes as standard. I've been building Craft sites since the early beta and have never once not had a question/bug/feature request dealt with in a timely manner. In most cases you get a response within hours, and often a fix or feature within days.

Add to this the thriving community of developers who can mostly be found on the Slack group and Stack Exchange site and its win win. Just join the Slack group and watch the #help channel for about 10 minutes and you'll see what I mean.

I honestly think after years of experience that you won't go wrong with Craft. Your content will be yours to own and move around, you won't be locked into a way of thinking that doesn't fit your structural needs. Your design and templates will be an actual joy to implement. Frontend devs will rejoice, editors and admins will hug you, backend devs will get EXCITED (I do) - the entire team however small will literally take a deep breathe and thank their choice of deity.

You get my point. I'm happy to go into more details about the guts of Craft if you like, just ask away, but for now I think I've gone on enough.

Go forth and Craft something worthwhile.

[josh_angell]

To add to this - I'm assuming you probably want to import your current content in some way. Having a clean database structure really helps with this, I've imported upwards of 5k entries from a number of different sources into Craft on one project and having a clean API to deal with makes massive difference.

[mrtrombone]

I have worked with Silverstripe before and as you mentioned about CraftCMS I find it flexible and lean compared to Wordpress - I feel like it is much easier to be close to the data etc so great from a developer point of view. It is OpenSource and has been chosen as the common web platform for NZ Government so presumably this means it hosts some pretty large sites.

[userAW]

Took a look at Silverstripe. Do users enter all content into one WYSIWYG? Is there a way to configure custom fields?

Thanks.

[sdudenhofer]

Have you looked at Drupal? Drupal 8 with a couple modules could handle everything you need(custom content types, discussion boards, blogs, user profiles, etc) It is scalable and easily configurable. www.drupal.org plus the community is a big help.

[userAW]

Thanks very much for your input.

We looked at Drupal 8 a little and spoke to some people in the organization who are using it.

Our concerns are:

1. the need for full-scale developers when working with Drupal. We don't want to the site maintenance to be dependent on hard-core coders long-term, since that requires always hiring programmers rather than lower-level web developers.

2. Drupal upgrades. We've heard that it's very difficult to upgrade between Drupal versions, as many of the plugins/modules don't get upgraded, at least not right away. So you can be left with a Drupal site that can't be upgraded without losing functionality.

Any comments?

[zefman]

For your sanity please do not use Drupal 8! I have recently finished a very large project using Drupal 8 and it nearly killed me.

Without bashing it too much the main issues were severe lack of good documentation, bugs in the core, bugs in contributed modules and poor development workflow.

Funnily enough, as a result of this project I started investigating alternative cms's and from now on will be using Craft.

Initially I was concerned it wouldn't be suitable for a project as complex as the project above, so I spent a day or too recreating some of the more complex parts of that project with Craft and it was a dream!

The developer learning curve with Craft is one of the best I have ever seen with a cms. We now have devs who previously only did frontend using craft in no time.

Nothing but good things to say about it really!

[sdudenhofer]

1. depends on if you need to build custom modules/plugins. Alot of the functionality that you seem to need can be created using already created modules(plus my experience is that if I'm thinking I need to build a module one is already out there.) 2. I've heard they are trying to make this better, but it can be wonky. A lot of times developers will wait 3-4 months to allow modules to catch up to the new version.

Another option may be Backdrop (backdropcms.org). Which is working on maintaining backwards compatibility.

[lightlyused]

Backdrop should only be used if you cannot upgrade, not for new projects.

[lightlyused]

I'll address two. With the new Drupal 8 architecture (symfony2 based), upgrades between major versions will be much easier in the future.

[userAW]

Do you have any exposure to Craft? Just curious. Thanks!

[sdudenhofer]

I personally do not have any experience with Craft.

[souldoubt]

Why is it important that the CMS be open source? Do you want to fork it and develop your own?

[Natetronn]

Craft can handle everything you have described with one caveat:

The "few discussion boards."

If it is a very basic setup then you could build something. For example, if it was similar to a comment system, such as the one I'm currently writing on (here at Hacker News), then I think it could be done easily with a comment plugin:

https://github.com/engram-design/Comments (note the threaded commenting and that by adding a few other plugins you could make it more feature rich than even this. Josh (@crawf) is almost always in the Slack channel if you have any questions about any of his plugins.)

If you need something more advanced, with allot more features etc, you'd currently want to look into third party options (since you don't have the time and or resources to build a plugin, I'm sure and one it's currently available.) For example:

Using a third party forum system like Vanilla and setting up SSO via a Craft plugin: https://github.com/nystudio107/vanillaforums

Or a discussion system as a service like: https://muut.com

Craft is new compared to some though, it is going on 4 years old (https://craftcms.com/changelog#build2063). Pixel & Tonic, the company behind Craft, is definitely not new, however. They've been around for along time and built some amazing add-ons for ExpressionEngine before they started Craft. The Matrix being one (https://craftcms.com/features/matrix)

Are you still worried about it being new? Well, consider a different perspective in that this is actually a good thing. That is, it doesn't have all the baggage and bloat those other systems continue to carry. They are built upon a different paradigm and are married to said paradigm (religiously) because it is what they started with, it is what they know, it was what has fed them etc. and what they continue to know and understand.

With Craft, you get a modern system which is very user friendly and, at the same time, as powerful as you'd need it. And yes, it is "flexible and lean" because of this. You can just "feel" it (the others "feel" heavy.) The UX/UI really is amazing!

Craft's source is open and built using OSS but, it's not FreeOSS. I don't want to get into some sort of debate about what that means here (if you're an org that needs FOSS then you need FOSS; don't use Craft) but, I would like to point out that paying a mere $299 buys me some of the best support in the business. Really, their support is stellar! Often times I speak directly with Brandon or Brad and many other team members when I have a question or need help (via Slack or Twitter or Email etc.) Good luck finding this with any other CMS for 300 bucks.

The license is pretty basic and is really in place so they have a business model to continue to build Craft itself and this long into the future. I like that. I, for one, don't mind supporting them. I see it as a win win (I think I'm getting the better end of the stick I might add.)

If you have any other questions feel free to head over to Craft's Slack channel (https://craftcms.com/community) where you'll find allot of community members who are more than happy to answer any of your questions; when and if they arise.

Continue your research and good on ya for doing your due diligence. Oh, and good luck with the project!

[userAW]

Thanks for your comment...and to all the others on this thread for the help. The reason we like Open Source is NOT because we don't want to fish out $300 for a CMS.

It's because effective Open Source projects have a large and robust community behind them, which means that:

1. They're not dropping out when the product becomes less profitable...if some drop out, others take over and

2. There are many people looking at the code and fixing bugs.

So that's why we'd prefer an Open Source product. But like I said, we are considering Craft.

Thanks.

[brandonkelly]

> 1. They're not dropping out when the product becomes less profitable...if some drop out, others take over

I mentioned we’re open to moving to FOSS if we can create a business model that supports it. I should also say that, if worst comes to worst and we have to shut off the lights, one of two things will happen: either we will sell Craft to one of the thousands of companies with a vested interest in the product, whom we strongly feel is capable of continuing to move it forward, or we’d give Craft a GPL or MIT license, making it FOSS. There is no scenario where we would just drop it and pretend it never existed. Even if we wanted to do that, it would ruin our professional careers and probably result in a few lawsuits, so no thanks! :)

> 2. There are many people looking at the code and fixing bugs.

We recommend that plugin developers familiarize themselves with Craft’s codebase, because it’s the best place to find examples of how to do things when developing plugins. As a result, we’ve received hundreds of bug fixes from the community (including suggested code fixes). So this is definitely not an exclusive benefit to FOSS software.

[BenParizek]

This may be a bit hard to test so I ask this more out of curiosity:

Do you feel there is more stability for businesses that have a stake in supporting popular open source projects than businesses that have proprietary software products?

Alternatively, do you feel that the number of abandoned or failed open source projects have a significant distinction from the number of abandoned or failed proprietary software projects?

I'd love to see some research on the topic, as while the classification of something being open source or not opens source has legal implications as to how it can be used and the type of community it attracts, does it really make a meaningful contribution to whether the group of projects or companies involved succeed or fail?