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How do you find Concrete5? I discovered it relatively recently and I've been investigating it in comparison to WordPress, which is starting to feel more than a

How do you find Concrete5? I discovered it relatively recently and I've been investigating it in comparison to WordPress, which is starting to feel more than a little bloated. (A WordPress installation with a bunch of plugins installed starts feeling like a Windows installation with a bunch of crap set to start automatically, with everything putting its little infobox, ads, and all manner of dross all over the place. I was turned off it totally the other day when a plugin update filled my entire screen with an ad.) I'd love to jump ship to something a little more modern, that's been developed from scratch with today's tech instead of patched together over the years. Do you find Concrete5 a decent replacement for WordPress for relatively simple content sites?

CWSpear 14y ago
As a developer, I like it because it's more extensible and well structured than WordPress, and focuses more on plugins (they don't have to be a bad thing!) rather than baking all of the functionality into a theme. As a user, I like it because it's smokin' easy to use!
david_nash 14y ago
I'm a wordpress developer and am currently finishing a C5 site. At first it looked awesome, then as I got into the template development I was less impressed. It's just not as polished as wordpress. I totally agree that wordpress is bloated, but C5 expects a lot more understanding of PHP and C5, which can be hard at times, because there documentation isn't very up to date. It may have just been me but I came across a couple of problems that should have been trivial to fix, or at least document, and that I had to search through forum posts for the answer. For one I actually had to post in the forum (ie the location of the dashboard URL, I couldn't see it in any of their docs). I recommend trying it out for now, but I personally wouldn't build a business around it (as a developer - it's pretty good for content admins and users).
12345j 14y ago
@david_nash I would completely disagree. C5 template development is one of the easiest i've ever seen. Just a few snippets of php embedded in html. In terms of your problem with the dashboard url, theres a login link at the bottom of most themes and when logged in theres a big honking button that says dashboard. not too complicated. At first I thought c5 would only be good for simple brochure style sites, but when I got into the internals I found that its a ton easier to build massive sites with than many other cms/blogs like wordpress ( a lot less confusing for the customer too).
mesuva 14y ago
I very much agree with 12345j, creating templates is really clean and easy with concrete5. A basic concrete5 theme has 4 lines of php: one to include header scripts, one to include footer scripts, one to create an editable area (like a widget area) and one to display it. To add further editable areas, you add the same two lines. With Wordpress, theming is very well documented, but there are a bunch of different files for the posts/categories/comments/etc. I know wordpress themes can be very simple too, but I'm convinced that to a newcomer it's more complicated than concrete5. Areas in concrete are way more flexible (and easier to understand) than Widget areas. When I first started using Wordpress I couldn't believe I couldn't easily set up different sidebar areas for different pages - it took extra plugins and config. There are so many things in concrete5 that I've found that solve typical development 'problems' that other systems don't handle well. In particular, the Composer, custom block types, page attributes and block template overrides. All these things come into play when you have a client that wants to adjust something or have an easy way to add content. They're things you might not see straight away with the system, but when you find them, you're really glad they are there. If you are a programmer, it's an incredibly powerful and well designed system. You don't have to learn at all at once too, you can learn how to create 'block' templates to tweak up some output, move on to overriding block functionality and then on to creating your own blocks. So I'm very happy using concrete5 - it's easy for clients, easy to theme and highly customisable.
fowlesp 14y ago
WordPress seems to be geared for the blogger, so if all you want is a blog.... Concrete5 is for WEBSITES. yes it can do blogs, but it can also do eCommerce, Brochure sites; you name it. I think it suites single-users and SMEs rather than big corporates (who have teams/departments for this sort of thing anyway). There doesn't seem to be much support for multiple-sites for example.. Installation and setup is incredibly straight forward, templates are mindlessly simple, there's also a vast library of free and commercial extensions and add-on for most things I can think of. My only complaint (as a developer) is that now I have to think more about STYLE (look and feel) and CONTENT that resolve technical issues, as an author isn't this exactly how its supposed to be? I recommend it as its elegant, simple (not in a bad way) and works. Given the ease of setup (and your obvious technical knowledge), you could have it running on your PC in an hour (get WAMP, then install C5 on top). so don't believe any of the comments here - try it for yourself :-)

CWSpear 14y ago

As a developer, I like it because it's more extensible and well structured than WordPress, and focuses more on plugins (they don't have to be a bad thing!) rather than baking all of the functionality into a theme. As a user, I like it because it's smokin' easy to use!

david_nash 14y ago

I'm a wordpress developer and am currently finishing a C5 site. At first it looked awesome, then as I got into the template development I was less impressed. It's just not as polished as wordpress. I totally agree that wordpress is bloated, but C5 expects a lot more understanding of PHP and C5, which can be hard at times, because there documentation isn't very up to date. It may have just been me but I came across a couple of problems that should have been trivial to fix, or at least document, and that I had to search through forum posts for the answer. For one I actually had to post in the forum (ie the location of the dashboard URL, I couldn't see it in any of their docs). I recommend trying it out for now, but I personally wouldn't build a business around it (as a developer - it's pretty good for content admins and users).

12345j 14y ago

@david_nash I would completely disagree. C5 template development is one of the easiest i've ever seen. Just a few snippets of php embedded in html. In terms of your problem with the dashboard url, theres a login link at the bottom of most themes and when logged in theres a big honking button that says dashboard. not too complicated. At first I thought c5 would only be good for simple brochure style sites, but when I got into the internals I found that its a ton easier to build massive sites with than many other cms/blogs like wordpress ( a lot less confusing for the customer too).

mesuva 14y ago

I very much agree with 12345j, creating templates is really clean and easy with concrete5. A basic concrete5 theme has 4 lines of php: one to include header scripts, one to include footer scripts, one to create an editable area (like a widget area) and one to display it. To add further editable areas, you add the same two lines. With Wordpress, theming is very well documented, but there are a bunch of different files for the posts/categories/comments/etc. I know wordpress themes can be very simple too, but I'm convinced that to a newcomer it's more complicated than concrete5. Areas in concrete are way more flexible (and easier to understand) than Widget areas. When I first started using Wordpress I couldn't believe I couldn't easily set up different sidebar areas for different pages - it took extra plugins and config. There are so many things in concrete5 that I've found that solve typical development 'problems' that other systems don't handle well. In particular, the Composer, custom block types, page attributes and block template overrides. All these things come into play when you have a client that wants to adjust something or have an easy way to add content. They're things you might not see straight away with the system, but when you find them, you're really glad they are there. If you are a programmer, it's an incredibly powerful and well designed system. You don't have to learn at all at once too, you can learn how to create 'block' templates to tweak up some output, move on to overriding block functionality and then on to creating your own blocks. So I'm very happy using concrete5 - it's easy for clients, easy to theme and highly customisable.

fowlesp 14y ago

WordPress seems to be geared for the blogger, so if all you want is a blog.... Concrete5 is for WEBSITES. yes it can do blogs, but it can also do eCommerce, Brochure sites; you name it. I think it suites single-users and SMEs rather than big corporates (who have teams/departments for this sort of thing anyway). There doesn't seem to be much support for multiple-sites for example.. Installation and setup is incredibly straight forward, templates are mindlessly simple, there's also a vast library of free and commercial extensions and add-on for most things I can think of. My only complaint (as a developer) is that now I have to think more about STYLE (look and feel) and CONTENT that resolve technical issues, as an author isn't this exactly how its supposed to be? I recommend it as its elegant, simple (not in a bad way) and works. Given the ease of setup (and your obvious technical knowledge), you could have it running on your PC in an hour (get WAMP, then install C5 on top). so don't believe any of the comments here - try it for yourself :-)