
CraftCMS vs. WordPress vs. other CMSs - userAW
We&#x27;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(!).<p>Our site is mostly &#x27;regular&#x27; content types, with a few discussion boards and some document handling. We also have a number of news sections&#x2F;blogs and some profile directories.<p>We have few developers with limited coding skills and even fewer coders on the team. We&#x27;ve considered WordPress (which we&#x27;re already using for a few sites) and also CraftCMS. CraftCMS seems more fitting to our needs because it&#x27;s flexible and lean; we&#x27;re impressed with what we&#x27;ve seen so far but are concerned that it&#x27;s not open-source and that it&#x27;s so new. WordPress seems cumbersome to the coding developers as much of the system is &#x27;out of the box&#x27; and requires loading lots of plugins and things that you don&#x27;t &#x27;need&#x27; for a page.<p>Are there other similar CMSs that people can recommend for us to consider? Please don&#x27;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.<p>Thank you.
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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](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](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...](https://www.google.com/trends/explore#q=craftcms&cmpt=q&tz=Etc%2FGMT%2B4)

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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.

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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.

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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?

~~~
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.

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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](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](https://github.com/nystudio107/vanillaforums)

Or a discussion system as a service like: [https://muut.com](https://muut.com)

Craft is new compared to some though, it is going on 4 years old
([https://craftcms.com/changelog#build2063](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](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](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.

