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Comment by dangerface | Hacker News Reader

I keep seeing these projects to make wordpress work more like a cms and I keep thinking why not just use a cms?

WordPress is a cms first and foremost.

edit: lol today I learned cms != blog

I'd say "sort of". It does support custom field types and custom post types. But you have to either write code, or use some 3rd party plugin to manage/use them.

No. WordPress is a blogging platform. A CMS is much more than that. If you need a CMS you probably want something more than WordPress.

Have you used it recently? What you say was true 10 years ago, but what features does it lack compared to a "true" CMS today?

I've built several high-traffic e-commerce sites using it, none of them had a blog. Compared to something like Drupal it's a total pleasure to use.

Same here, I built and oversee 3 WordPress online stores that together do more than $1m/month during peak season (summer).

WordPress has the ability for pages as well as posts (along with versioning of those items). User account management with permissions. Custom fields. What exactly does "true CMS" mean?

And I'd argue the easiest-to-use admin area out there, or so my clients lead me to believe.

I have moved wordpress stores to other e-commerce platforms and seen an instant improvement in sales.

Thats why wordpress is a blog and not a CMS because the only content it handles well are blog posts and basic wall of text pages. A CMS will not limit or put a definition on the content it manages, thats up to you. As an example, how complicated would it be to model the content of a store, store manager and then the relation ships between them, this is basic stuff for any other CMS.

If you don't show your clients anything else they will think its great. My clients say the same thing about wordpress, until they see something else then they wonder why anyone uses wordpress.

I think this is an outdated perspective. You can easily train the WordPress CMS to handle any content you could possibly want to throw at it, including your above example (which would take like ten minutes, tbh), for sure. Took a bit of time to figure out all the moving pieces, but WP is a fully mature CMS at this point.

Interested in what other CMS's you would recommend? You aren't being very specific.

>to other e-commerce platforms

Which platforms? What was different about them that made them better than WP?

>because the only content it handles well are blog posts and basic wall of text pages

Unless you use post types. Now since 4.7 post types can apply to everything, including page templates. Have you tried using this and failed before you made your comment?

That's like saying WordPress is a forum because you can install bbPress.

That's like saying WordPress is a great CMS to manage the content for your forum, using a plethora of great plugins or custom post types to output the content in a forum-like view.

>A CMS is much more than that.

Can you explain?

Why do you then still get a blog when you install it?

Legacy behavior nobody bothered to update ;)

wordpress.org says its a blog in the title, it's the first word.

Haha and what's the last word? "Blog Tool, Publishing Platform, and CMS"

WordPress is a flexible, multipurpose software platform.

What's your recommendation for an open-source CMS? Preferably one with relatively simple administration that a layman (client) could still comprehend.

cc @tyingq, @zaphar, @bybjorn, @dangerface

I've used WordPress for years. It's great for a simple blog, but not any kind of complex CMS, IMHO. After adding a few plugins, maintaining it is a nightmare; and I won't get into the database design underneath.

Another vote for Wagtail: my team has moved to it and have found it to be wonderful. It is the first time our tech, content, UX and marketing teams all agree on a CMS being wonderful. Streamfield is an absolutely killer feature. Our writers love the editor interface, which was clearly designed by and for content creators, and not by a bored developer like me.

Check out Wagtail. It takes a little bit more planning to get started, but wow, does it pay off in the long run.

It is truly free and open-source, released under the BSD license.

We love Wagtail CMS (https://wagtail.io/) It's a free, beautiful, versatile and fast Django (Python) based CMS.

Check out the sites which are made with wagtail at madewithwagtail.org

cheers, ralph

Good question. I like perch its quick and easy to build with, I moved from wordpress to perch last year and it has cut development time in half.

It's super flexible no need for dodgy third part plugins that's no longer maintained. Instead of plugins I just build everything I need custom with the tools perch provides, I end up with something thats perfect for the client and its a lot faster than trying to modify some third party plugin.

Clients are initially scared of perch, they want wordpress because thats what they are used to and "thats what every one else uses". Five minutes into their perch training their attitude is "This is great. Why does every one else use wordpress?".

Sure its not free like wordpress but its only £50 and its worth every penny, you will easily make that money back in development costs in a day.

https://grabaperch.com/

I use Wordpress + ACF Pro, without any extra ACF 3rd party plugins. I also write all the front-end stuff that interfaces with ACF.

With that in mind, what would be the biggest timesaver(s) of using Perch?

>an open-source CMS

It meets the original definition of open source as in the source code is open and modifiable, you know the opposite of closed source.

If you mean the OSI definition of open source which defines how free the licence is, rather than how open the source code is then I suggest you check out the FSF they are the original OSI and advocate for free software and generally don't feel the need to change an existing definition and make it theirs.

I don't believe it is "open" - although you have the code to modify, the license will make it very clear that it is anything but "open."

If you have the code to modify then its open source, thats all that open source is it has nothing to do with the license unless you are talking about an OSI license in which case its just an OSI license and nothing to do with the source code or its openness.

Wagtail (www.wagtail.io) all the way. We at Overcast use this for all our clients, ranging from small sites with a couple of pages to enterprise sites with thousands of pages. Very simple but very powerful admin interface and treads the line very nicely between simplicity for programmer vs simplicity for the end user.

I like Craft CMS[0]. It's very flexible and developer friendly. Great for custom site builds.

[0]: https://craftcms.com/

Does it support multisite? Multisite is a big reason for wordpress's popularity as a CMS.

Coming to Craft 3 - https://craftcms.com/news/craft-3-multi-site

If you're interested in trying something new - request for an invite at https://pragma.build

You can read more about the project here - https://www.laktek.com/2016/11/29/introducing-pragma/. We'll be sending out more beta invites in the next couple of weeks.

WordPress: easy to use, documentation and tutorials are available everywhere, you don't generally have to train clients to use it, etc.

You can go with a niche CMS if you want, but WordPress is the most popular for a reason.

If Java is not a hurdle, checkout Enonic CMS, http://enonic.com/

Edit: * Java on the back-end

Statamic is absolutely fantastic. Great features and functionality that allows for you to easily extend and customize as needed.

Statamic is dope! not sure its open source though, i think it requires a license.

It's simple, non-tech admin staff are familiar with the interface (and can be easily trained), there's a vast ecosystem of plugins and integrations for it, it's easy to hire people or teams who have experience working with it. WP has its flaws and an upper limit to what it's capable of, but it's often a very pragmatic choice for small to medium sized content-driven websites.

I hear this a lot, but I've found it to be untrue. When I used to do wordpress development, a large part of my job was to customize admin pages so the non-tech staff could actually use it. The default wordpress admin interface leaves a lot to be desired.

Sure, but the admin customizations are pretty damn simple once you figure out the few commands you need (registering custom post types, adding & customizing options pages, removing unnecessary tabs per user role, etc). The fact is, it has the market share, so neophytes are at least somewhat familiar with the interface. That is a true advantage.

Also, ACF Pro is your best friend in the CMS customization area & it easily dumps custom fields into the WP REST API for use in app frontends like ngx or React. I'm working on an app & CMS with this stack now and frankly, it's fantastic.

(registering custom post types, adding & customizing options pages, removing unnecessary tabs per user role, etc)

Thats my point you don't need to do any of that with a CMS it just works out of the box. People may be familiar with the admin interface but that doesn't mean its good, just that they havent seen anything better, if the admin interface is as good as something like perch you wont have to train the clients (we do anyway) its all just intuitive.

I cant reply to your other comment but I do still have to work with wordpress and I also use ACF Pro, it sucks so many plugins made by third party developers who have went bust and left me to maintain their garbage code.

As for alternatives I use and recomend https://grabaperch.com/

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