I’m debating between using concrete5 and wordpress for offering easy to manage portfolios for my clients. I haven’t used concrete5 but it seems to make more sense than wordpress but I know tons more people use wordpress.
What are the benefits to using wordpress for portfolio websites?
I tried it a couple times but seems its easier to develop using a proper CMS, Is there something I’m missing since a ton of people seem to be using wordpress?
Are there certain plugins to make wordpress easier to use as a CMS?
I hear that MacDonald’s is a very popular burger chain, too, but that doesn’t mean that the food is (how to put this tactfully…) suitable for everyone’s tastes. My point being that “popular” doesn’t equal “the best choice”.
I’m in the process of trying out a bunch of CMSes on a local server (having been roped in to help with someone else’s website for the first time ), so here are my thoughts.
Concrete seems to be easy to use (especially considering that I’m only comfortable with writing the HTML/CSS myself: not WYSIWYG), but I don’t feel able to get it to produce the output that I want. I like the Drupal-style admin access on any page, but its way of using editable content sections is sort of odd to me. It’s all too abstracted. Early days, though.
I’ve tried Perch, which would suit me (you create editable pages) and would be very easy for the site owner to use. And it works without a database (uses FTP).
But I’m most likely to use either Drupal or Textpattern, depending on how far I get with Drupal (bit complex) and/or whether my friend can use the Textpattern interface. They both have quite a lot of potential, though Drupal seems like it might be more powerful (should that be needed).
Regarding writing your own CMS: why reinvent the wheel?
I’m not used to anything at the moment, because I’m starting to try CMSes for the first time. That’s making it harder to learn, but at least I have no methods that I need to unlearn.
The MODx interface is definitely a lot slower than I would have expected: Drupal’s interface is very responsive, as are the others that I’m trying. Testing locally in Chrome at the mo’.
Well, to each his own. If you think the current MODx manager is slow, you should have tried it last year when Revolution first came out. That one was really slow. Personally I think the current manager is as fast as anything out there, if you run it in a good rendering browser such as Chrome or Opera.
As for quirky, I guess it’s just what you’re used to or not. I came from Joomla and found the MODx manager pretty intuitive.
MODx might be good, but I hated what I found to be a very quirky and slow interface and very poorly written documentation that does not adequately explain anything. I tried it yesterday, but I’ve had to give up on it. I’m actually making more progress with Drupal than I could with MODx.
Enwise: regarding Concrete5; I’ve used it a bit more now and I think that it probably would be good for a portfolio, as long as its way of working suits you and whoever else has to use it. That’s obviously vital.
You really should check out MODx if you’re looking for a CMS. It’s easier to use than a bare-metal framework like Cake, but not nearly as limiting as a pre-made system like Wordpress. It’s got a great friendly community as well.
It depends on what functionality these portfolio sites require. Personally, I’d probably build my own based on a framework, perhaps with an underlying CMS (e.g. CakePHP with a CMS) to give maximum flexibility.
Yes I had a look at MDx seems very good but the documentation and help for learning is not great, I think if you send the time it would be very good but I’m still sticking to WP for now anyway.
), so here are my thoughts.