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Comment by uzegonemad | Hacker News Reader

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

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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It's super flexible no need for dodgy third part plugins that's no longer maintained.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/

>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.

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?

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.

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