6 ms·

WordPress Alternatives

149 points by pabs3 2y ago

theluketowers 2y ago
What about Winter CMS?
- jszymborski 2y ago
  Wasn't aware OctoberCMS had a FOSS fork. Looks neat!
joshdavham 2y ago
Out of these, what do you guys recommend?
- manuelmoreale 2y ago
  I personally jumped from Wordpress to Kirby years ago and never looked back but it obviously depends on the types of projects you work on. For my use case it works perfectly.
timetraveller26 2y ago
what about woodworking?
julienmarie 2y ago
Special mention to Processwire. Worked with it a few years ago and really loved it at the time. https://processwire.com/ https://processwire.com/ Craft is great but a bit slow in my tests. They have a really powerful e-commerce offer though and is really flexible.
- possibleworlds 2y ago
  +1 for ProcessWire. I am not doing freelance dev anymore but for the small set of sites I still maintain I love doing updates for the ProcessWire installs and dread it with every other project. Anyone shopping for Wordpress alternatives should definitely check it out. The only project I’ve tried recently that is as fun, flexible and productive is Astro.
- jlahijani 2y ago
  +999 for ProcessWire. It's my CMS of choice for 10 years straight and is actually a pretty good platform for web applications as well (with some limitations compared to something like Rails or Laravel since configuration is stored in the database). I made this 36-part video series comparing WordPress to ProcessWire which I recorded on-and-off between 2014-2018 and released it that year. Although that was a while ago, it's still mostly accurate since both systems are mature and haven't changed drastically in that time (this is before Gutenberg): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOrdUWNK38ibz8U_5Vq4zSPZfvFKzUuiT https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOrdUWNK38ibz8U_5Vq4z... Also worth a read: https://processwire.com/about/wordpress-vs-processwire/ https://processwire.com/about/wordpress-vs-processwire/ For the JS devs, ProcessWire has a similar approach to Payload CMS from what I've seen (although ProcessWire dates back to 2003 and open-sourced in ~2010/11). Best CMS ever. :)
- egeozcan 2y ago
  Totally agree! Processwire is super simple for simple things and is super extensible if you need anything custom. There's nothing I couldn't do with it and PHP isn't even remotely my language of choice. It gets the job done with tremendous flexibility.
- dmje 2y ago
  Thanks for mentioning ProcessWire. I've heard of it but never looked. Just spent a couple of hours fiddling and I have to say - really like the look of this. Thank you for bringing it to my attention!
- wvbdmp 2y ago
  ProcessWire is great and it’s the perfect example for the OP’s main criterion “can be downloaded, dropped onto a server, and you’ll have a website”! One great thing about it is that that’s also how you update it. Download new version, replace a single directory on the server, and you’ll have the new version. For a WordPress alternative, however, ProcessWire is perhaps not batteries-included enough. Like many of the systems in this thread, it caters more to developers who want full control over their site. For someone who just needs a blog with maybe a contact form and wants to choose a nice “template” and be done with it, ProcessWire isn’t a good fit. While it has “site profiles”, it’s lacking a lot of traction in that area, as well as a consumer-oriented marketplace that’s nice to browse (screenshots, curation etc.). But for anyone who wants to build something more complex, it’s a great choice. Cozy little community, too.
pabs3 2y ago
Switching to a static site generator seems like the way to go for lots of sites, especially blog-only ones. Are there any graphical SSGs that non-technical users could run locally to generate a site and upload it to their web host?
- jszymborski 2y ago
  I haven't used it since forever ago, but Lektor [0] is this weird in between. You need to be able to pip install and run `lektor serve` in the terminal but most else is done in the browser. [0] https://www.getlektor.com/ https://www.getlektor.com/
  - pabs3 2y ago
    Sounds more like WordPress than what I was thinking :)
  - krapp 2y ago
    I used Lektor recently. I was OK but I found the editor UI awkward and things like tags and subjects difficult to manage, and there didn't seem to be much in the way of current support or a plugin ecosystem. Publishing directly to a server with Git push and only having html online was nice, though. I might go back to it. I switched to Wordpress but I blog so little it seems like overkill. AFAIK Lektor doesn't have a way to crosspost to Mastodon and I don't want to learn enough Python to write a plugin myself.
    - jszymborski 2y ago
      I used it not longer after it launched and it had (perhaps understandably) a lot of rough edges. I haven't bothered trying since I switched to Hugo.
- burningChrome 2y ago
  I've used Netlify for a while now for a lot of my basic static site customers. You can easily transfer a domain, they have automatic builds when you commit to several different source control vendors like Github or Gitlab. They have a ton of services and I was using them when they still a startup and Mathias used to personally answer your emails. Now they're pretty big and have a host of different services they offer. Their analytics are still in need of some help, but their services are rock solid and very, very affordable. They were really the first company to push the idea of JAMSTACK (Javascript, APIs, Markup) and have really been pushing that envelope ever since. They've also acquired several Y Combinator startups recently. https://www.netlify.com/ https://www.netlify.com/
synergy20 2y ago
is Drupal getting better for ordinary people to deploy? it was my choice 15 years ago it's sad python, rails,node never had a rival platform to replace WordPress over the years, long live php for the web
- BarryMilo 2y ago
  Doubt it, it mostly went more corporate over time.
- JohnTHaller 2y ago
  Drupal has gotten more difficult for 'ordinary' people to deploy. That's a big reason there are many times more sites still running Drupal 7 than there are running the current release: https://www.drupal.org/project/usage/drupal https://www.drupal.org/project/usage/drupal The complexity compared with something like WordPress is a big part of the difference in install base. Drupal powers under a million websites (I run 3 of those). WordPress powers something north of 450 million websites.
  - tylershuster 2y ago
    It's hard to upgrade from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8, but it's really not hard to deploy anew. The "Drupal CMS" initiative is trying hard to lower the already low barrier to entry.
- tylershuster 2y ago
  I don't understand the "Drupal is hard" mentality on HN. Drupal is just as simple as WordPress to deploy. Unzip, plug in database credentials and go. It's better with composer, but there's some real prejudice against it. Drupal 7 is admittedly too complicated but the new Symfony-based Drupal is fun to develop. I used to use WordPress and after the first few months of Drupal I realized how much better it was at, like, everything, than WordPress is. It's been buttering my bread for 6 years now and I think it's better every release.
- stiltzkin 2y ago
  [dead]
raybb 2y ago
I've been wanting to setup SSG for a while now. However, if you want something hosted that is free and no fuss I've really been enjoying hashnode. Idk how long it'll last but it dumps all my blog posts into markdown files on GitHub and has worked great for me. Devs respond quickly to issues. Even bringing your own domain is free. Not sure how they plan to make money yet. https://blog.rayberger.org/ https://blog.rayberger.org/
tiffanyh 2y ago
TextPattern use to a thing like around the same time WP got started. It’s also PHP based. https://textpattern.com/ https://textpattern.com/
- Brajeshwar 2y ago
  If I remember correctly, TextPattern was done correctly compared to WordPress. Unfortunately, that meant it was more complex for most developers to go deeper. The community flocked to WordPress, and every other one became more of a niche. Didn't they also have a Markdown-ish writing style? I liked that, and I used it as a plugin for WordPress for a very long time. TextPatten went slow and now seems to have been chugging along well.
chalcolithic 2y ago
strange that no aws-based alternatives exist for low traffic websites cloudfront + lambda + dynamodb is free
- robjan 2y ago
  > The criteria for this list are "Can it be downloaded, dropped onto a server, and you'll have a website?"
yawnxyz 2y ago
I've just moved my stack Astro deployed on Deno Deploy and it's been very very fun and easy. Really like it. I just copied all my Svelte files over and it worked. I copied over all my Deno files and it worked. And it's building static pages onto Deno, effortlessly. And I'm just pulling in content from Notion and Airtable as CMS and caching on Deno KV, and that's also very very easy.
oidar 2y ago
If you are looking for a no-nonsense, simple blog platform consider Bear[1] - It's super simple to use, and has been solid for me for the past year. Plus the support (and dev - Herman Martinus here on HN[2]) is responsive and friendly. [1] https://bearblog.dev https://bearblog.dev [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=HermanMartinus https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=HermanMartinus
- gloflo 2y ago
  Emphasis on platform. > Bear Blog has been built as a platform and not as an individual blog generator. It is more like Substack than Hugo. Due to this it isn't possible to individually self-host a Bear Blog.
- HermanMartinus 2y ago
  Thanks for the shoutout! For clarity, as a sibling comment has pointed out: while Bear is open-source, it is a platform and not managed hosting of individual blogs. If you're interested in self-hosting something that looks like Bear, there's a free Hugo template[1]. If you're happy using a platform, then Bear is super fast and built with longevity in mind (at both the tech and organisational level). [1]https://themes.gohugo.io/themes/hugo-bearblog/ https://themes.gohugo.io/themes/hugo-bearblog/
  - xNeil 2y ago
    Sharing the Hugo theme is a great move Herman. I'll be starting a Bearblog now, all thanks to this comment.
keiferski 2y ago
For developers, there are many alternatives, but for the vast majority of use cases, there really aren’t any. WordPress is popular because it’s a dead simple way to make a website that doesn’t require any technical skills - and has been this dead simple solution for almost the last two decades. Most of the popular hosts come with WP installed, so there is no need to install software on a server (a fairly “technical” thing to do.) Realistically the only alternative for these users is another website builder like Wix, Squarespace, or Shopify. The hosted version of Ghost is pretty good too and probably the single closest thing to WordPress.
- qingcharles 2y ago
  Plus the large plugin library.
  - bigiain 2y ago
    For us, it's the huge existing user base of people who know how to do authoring/publishing in WordPress. (Even if they don't have the skills to understand what they're doing installing plugins sensibly, we mostly don't hand over Admin role accounts ion we don't have to.) I don't want to hand hold a small business owner through writing markdown or how to commit to git to get their homepage edited. I want to be able to tell them "Just ask around your staff or family or friends, someone will know how to update your wordpress site, or one of them will at least know somebody who can. Failing that, go to your local craft/hipster coffee place and ask anyone with a laptop open for suggestions."
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
Brajeshwar 2y ago
If one is looking for a simple/personal blog and wants to write in plain-text Markdown, one should consider Jekyll on GitHub Pages[1]. The beauty is that one does not need to worry about setting up Jekyll on the local machine. Just write and push to Github. If one wants to skip that, just go to GitHub and write there; a version of VSCode is built in there. This also allows one to carry (take out) their content anywhere on any platform that supports plain text (MarkDown). Browsers can also just render plain-text as it, so if you just drag-drop them on a server, it should render as your website. I have a pretty large personal site[2], and I hate Jekyll because it takes too long to compile locally, but I’m on it because I don’t let it interfere with my writing. As for a WordPress replacement/alternative, it is going to be pretty hard to find something as prolific and click-clacky easy as WordPress to start off. It has like two decades of the mother of all kitchen sink built-in for anyone to jump in and rummage something out it. Update/Edit: Github Pages has also become rock solid stable too. No downtime in the past 3+ years. 1. https://pages.github.com https://pages.github.com 2. https://brajeshwar.com/2021/brajeshwar.com-2021/ https://brajeshwar.com/2021/brajeshwar.com-2021/
- tomjen3 2y ago
  Its solid advice if that is your problem and if you are migrating from a standard wordpress. I ran into another problem - I wanted a static site[0]. I tried some of the static hosting engines, including Jekyll, but they always seemed to want to force my site into a blog format. Yeah with some work they could partially be twisted into what I wanted, but only partially. Do you know of a static website builder that builds websites, and not blogs? [0]: The difference to me is that my content should never have a date associated with it, and the landing page should be a landing page, not a list of recent pages.
  - hombre_fatal 2y ago
    Build your website like you would normally and then crawl it to build a static html site. Years ago I used some npm library that was like a fancy `wget -r` for this purpose. I was generating a static site from an express server I made.
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aaronbrethorst 2y ago
Against all odds and expectations, Movable Type is apparently still around and a thing: https://github.com/movabletype/movabletype https://github.com/movabletype/movabletype
yellow_lead 2y ago
I don't see framer here but it seems like it's getting popular recently. Can anyone share their experience with it?
- stiltzkin 2y ago
  [dead]
rushabh 2y ago
Frappe Builder: https://frappe.io/builder https://frappe.io/builder https://github.com/frappe/builder https://github.com/frappe/builder Visual website designing + publishing, built on Frappe Framework
librasteve 2y ago
none of these look attractive to me … what about a clean fork of WordPress?
todotask 2y ago
You're going to encounter various limitations with the CMS that it was designed for. I'll say this once: if we need a complete rebuild in 2025 and beyond, the Astro web framework could be the core engine due to its unopinionated nature and support for many UI components, including the latest addition, VanJS. It's seem like a well designed to keep things as simple as possible and still open to community feedback. Of course, you could host it on Netlify, Cloudflare, and Vercel using adapters from Astro. Although it's not a traditional CMS, it's capable of serving as the core engine that should serve well for 99% of use cases out there.
WAT251922th 2y ago
[flagged]
kcrwfrd_ 2y ago
Payload is really nice: https://payloadcms.com https://payloadcms.com
mewc 2y ago
+1 to ghost. built in node, supports the standard stuff you'd expect and new school.
qingcharles 2y ago
I did what any regular (in)sane developer would do when faced with this type of problem: wrote my own from scratch...!
deleted 2y ago
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exodust 2y ago
> "I have not used Kirby in client work, but I hear only good things." Not a great idea to recommend something based on hearsay. There's good & bad things to hear about any CMS. One inexplicable decision by the Kirby team was to push their politics by "taking a stand" against Twitter, suddenly cutting off their account. This leaves you wondering if Kirby is abandoned software since their top post is from Jan 2023 announcing version 3. https://x.com/getkirby https://x.com/getkirby If you don't like Musk, why on Earth would you rattle the cages of your potential customers with such views? It's possible to use Twitter/x in the most minimal way, disable replies, post every blue moon. At least keep the latest version visible. Twitter is essentially an online feed of you business activities. From a potential customer point of view, Twitter is agnostic to "where is your software at" research. Ending your timeline in a principled huff, isn't smart. Meanwhile, in the article: > "Statamic.... I think if the cofounder hadn't brazenly endorsed a horrendously damaging politician, I'd have tried it." All aboard the facepalm express. Is it too much to ask to keep politics out of software recommendations and social media version announcement updates?
- manuelmoreale 2y ago
  > This leaves you wondering if Kirby is abandoned software since their top post is from Jan 2023 I mean, the project has an official website and a public repo on GitHub. I’m not sure why we’re expecting Twitter to be an official update channel. It clearly isn’t anymore.
  - exodust 2y ago
    I mean, someone casually reading about CMS options or related topics on Twitter might see an old mention of Kirby. They click, see no new posts and move on. Obviously someone with intent to specifically look up Kirby, will go beyond their social media scrolling. I'm talking about the multi-tasking rapid-browsing people who give a seconds of attention to a possible lead. Why risk losing those leads because you "don't agree with XYZ"?
- pbowyer 2y ago
  More the problem with Kirby is the admin still using Vue 2, so if you use Vue 3 for everything else and want to make a plugin, you have to go back to how you used to write Vue and no longer do.
kmeisthax 2y ago
Matt Mullenweg is being an asshat about WP Engine (and in general) but that doesn't mean you have to jump off WordPress. That's actually the power of the GPL: it's enshittification resistant. The flipside of this is that you can't stop freeloading. In fact, freeloading is a feature, not a bug. Now, if Automattic had CLA ownership over 100% of WordPress, I'd actually be scared, because they could strip the GPL off of new releases and lock the system down. But as far as I'm aware WordPress's copyright ownership is distributed, so Automattic can't just change the license to the Fuck You, Pay Me Public License and rugpull the whole community. The worst part about this drama is that Matt's not even wrong. WP Engine is kinda shit[0]. But Matt's behavior is extremely unprofessional and he's making WP Engine into the victim of an extortion campaign. [0] If you're wondering, the thing that makes it shit is not that they disable revisions. It's that they have significant reliability issues, both with their shared and dedicated offerings, and their support teams do not have visibility into their systems to fix those issues.
tylershuster 2y ago
Drupal should be the obvious choice here. Still PHP-based, still fieldable entities, and a much saner data structure with infinite extensibility. It gets weird hate on HN so I expect that kind of pushback but hey, it's put food on my family's table for more than 6 years and powers some huge and popular sites so I'm not concerned.
- kioleanu 2y ago
  It gets weird hate because it has (had?) an insanely steep learning curve and no setup looked like the other. With wordpress at least, it's pretty consistent across plugins and implementations and very easy to pick up
  - tylershuster 2y ago
    Must be "had" — I've used it since D8 first came out and while there's weirdness, it's never been anything beyond what WordPress threw at me. In terms of setup, it's just like — enter database credentials and start making pages. There's plenty of themes out here and HN users aren't stupid — everyone knows how to compile their own CSS and use composer if they want to.
p4bl0 2y ago
There's an obvious actual alternative to WordPress that's missing here: Dotclear. When I say "actual alternative" I mean a web based blog engine rather than something entirely different like a static site generator that transpile markdown files into HTML web page and an RSS feed from the command line that you then have to rsync to your server or make use of the continuous integration service of a software forge to rebuild on the server side. I'm not saying this is a bad workflow, just that I don't feel it really counts as an alternative to WordPress for most people (you know, non-technical people). I ended up using Dotclear for my own personal blog after years of using home-made blog engines. By default, I was going for WordPress initially, but configuring it and creating a custom theme that looked like I wanted it to look like was a mess. I felt like I had to learn a whole new technology stack instead of being able to use my PHP, HTML, and CSS skills. In comparison, Dotclear was a breeze to work with, and after days scratching my head on the complexity of WordPress, it took me maybe like two hours to get where I wanted with Dotclear, including the time to discover and installing the software. I enjoy it very much since then! See https://dotclear.org/ https://dotclear.org/ for more information. Anecdoticaly, Dotclear is older than WordPress (2002 vs 2003) :).
pkphilip 2y ago
Interesting to see that some of the biggest and closest alternatives to Wordpress are missing from the list: * Joomla * Typo3 * Drupal
lfaw 2y ago
Not mentioned in OP: https://getgrav.org/ https://getgrav.org/ I used it for a project once and both me and the client were happy. It compares to kirby.
4ndrewl 2y ago
Will be interesting to review this in 5-10 years to see how many of these are still viable and whether there's a fashion tax to pay by having to switch.
openrisk 2y ago
Its telling about the stagnation of Web technology that there isnt a real Wordpress alternative. You'd think that after all those decades there would be a modern, open source solution that offers the same and more functionality (not... less, looking at you SSG wanabees) but with a cleaner, safer and easier to use stack that is liked by both technical and non-technical people. Stands to reason that such a leap forward in web publishing should be technically possible (the requirements are clear and dont need AGI) but there is also some truth in the saying "its the economy stupid, thats why you can't have good things": There is no economic incentive in this direction in the modern digital landscape.
- threatofrain 2y ago
  It's not about web technology, it's about popularity. It's like saying it's damning to technology that we don't have a serious YouTube contender. People don't just want technology, they want to be on the most popular thing. There are consequences to popularity. For example, if you need help it's a lot easier to find both self-help guides and technical people to help you. There are a lot more extensions or 3rd-party tooling. Even if there are exploits there are a lot more eyes on the problem and fixes come sooner. So there are other WordPress alternatives, they're just less popular with all the consequences that come with being a minority player.
  - openrisk 2y ago
    Yes, I agree there is the popularity / network effects barrier. But when the advantage offered by technology is irresistible these barriers can be overcome. Tiktok is case in point and arguably it has become a pretty serious youtube contender (whether one likes the implications or not...)
- timeon 2y ago
  All modern solutions (including php+Laravel) are not possible to use on basic cheap shared hosting - where the most 'self-host' web still is.
nicbou 2y ago
I used Craft for years for All About Berlin. I edit this website for a living and Craft served me really well. It was an elegant way to set a content structure and proved quite flexible in that regard. Eventually I switched to a custom-made SSG because clicking around an admin area is very slow, and because of serious bugs with the WYSIWYG editor led to content loss that was very hard to fix. Editing plain text with familiar purpose-built software, and deploying with source control and branches is incredibly valuable. I wrote more about the reason and benefits of the switch here: https://nicolasbouliane.com/projects/ursus https://nicolasbouliane.com/projects/ursus
maurits 2y ago
Any recommendations for a self hosted back-end that is images, photography only? Instagram seems to have taken over this space.
ruthmarx 2y ago
I'm a fan of Wagtail, built on Django. Much more setup to get configured, but it's far more customizable and stable once you do.
- openrisk 2y ago
  wagtail is really not ready for prime time, maybe by design. in some respects its easier to use the django admin...
  - ruthmarx 2y ago
    No idea where you are getting that from. It's used in production on plenty of sites.
    - openrisk 2y ago
      "used in production" is not the same as being a serious wordpress alternative. Would bet that none of those production deployments are without some non-negligible developer time investment. On top of that (assuming that extra investment is possible / desirable) the abstractions layered on top of django are quite opaque and have a steep learning curve. Having to code standard CMS functionalities becomes an eye-rolling exercise.
      - ruthmarx 2y ago
        > "used in production" is not the same as being a serious wordpress alternative. You only said you thought it wasn't ready for prime time, which I think a reasonable interpretation is that you were saying you didn't think it was ready for production use. > Would bet that none of those production deployments are without some non-negligible developer time investment. That's the thing, I think the time invested is pretty negligible. Especially when compared to maintaining wordpress and having to deal with plugin craziness. > Having to code standard CMS functionalities becomes an eye-rolling exercise. You only really have to setup models for pages, tags, categories etc, after that the editor is incredibly functional.
  - 2y ago
brylie 2y ago
Cross-posting here: I can highly recommend Wagtail CMS: https://wagtail.org/ https://wagtail.org/ It’s based on Python/Django and has an excellent developer and user experience. They pay a lot of attention to detail, including a block-based content editor, similar to Gutenberg, and first class accessibility support.
invisiblea 2y ago
Sanity is a great headless CMS with a generous free tier package https://www.sanity.io/pricing https://www.sanity.io/pricing Paired with caching/static frontend, it's more than enough to power small to medium traffic sites.
johnchristopher 2y ago
That list isn't deep enough. These are CMS alternatives, not WordPress alternatives. I need a WordPress alternative to/with the following requirements: - self-hostable - opensource core (paid plugins are not a problem) - so it can be installed and intensively tested without shelling too much money just for R&D - has ACF equivalent - has a visual composer à la Gutenberg, a middle-ground between WordPad editing interface and Divi/Elementor - so the marketing/press department can push content fast - REST API - to hydrate stuff - optional: needs to have been around for 5 years - optional: needs to still be around in 5 years Ghost has no ACF apparently (https://forum.ghost.org/t/custom-fields-for-posts/1124/46 https://forum.ghost.org/t/custom-fields-for-posts/1124/46 and https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/issues/9020 https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/issues/9020) and Astro is too custom as of now and I don't want another Gatsby (too short-lived).
- KayL 2y ago
  100% TRUE. Also, a simple and workable e-cart I tried many alternatives. Their upgrade path is painful.
deleted 2y ago
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ThinkBeat 2y ago
I dont think the political rant on there is offputting and childish drama. Having a world where ecochamber credentials and political adherens is as far from an open and inclusive society.
oddb0d 2y ago
Drupal is the dark horse here, especially with the new can-run-in-your-browser Drupal CMS, try it out here: http://dgo.to/drupal_cms http://dgo.to/drupal_cms Out-of-the-box you've got a responsive theme, built-in accessibility, multilingual capabilities, a security team, and the accumulation of 23 years of tried-and-tested code. The efforts that are being put into this new product are making it as easy to use as any other CMS, which is a huge leap for Drupal. Add into the equation things like the new AI initiative (http://dgo.to/artificial_intelligence_initiative http://dgo.to/artificial_intelligence_initiative) where you can literally configure the site through chat as founder of Drupal, Dries Buytaert, recently demonstrated asking AI to create a categorisation of wine tour events based on the top 20 wine regions (https://bit.ly/wine-tours-taxonomy https://bit.ly/wine-tours-taxonomy) I have a feeling that, based on my 21 years of using it, I think Drupal's going to surprise quite a few people over the next year. I don't just use it as a CMS, I leverage native commerce (http://dgo.to/commerce http://dgo.to/commerce) and CRM (http://dgo.to/contacts http://dgo.to/contacts) modules in order to have a fully integrated framework which, architecturally, enables me to create functionality that would be expensive if even possible using separate systems. There's even a no-code suite Drupal ECA (http://dgo.to/eca http://dgo.to/eca). I could go on...
slhck 2y ago
Since when is the WordPress ecosystem this … bad? I built WP websites 10-15 years ago and it was a quite straightforward experience back then. These days, there seems to be no around themes and plugins that all have very limited free versions, and constantly nag you about upgrading to the pro version, in a million different styles of banners and popups. Hosting providers have made it easier to deploy WordPress in a one-click manner, but anything beyond a basic page (sending email, backups, contact forms) already turns into a nightmare. No thanks!
DavidDarnes 2y ago
Hey there, author here. Lots of good suggestions here, but a lot of them are for complex development stacks. My criteria was something that can be installed and ran without having to do much wiring up. That being said I do love me an SSG and content API, my own site is Eleventy hooked up to Ghost. Also saw some suggestions like Drupal and Joomla, I may add these but from personal experience I've almost always been migrating away from them. There's a reason they're popular though. Ps. Sorry if you got upset about the political spin, but it's not escapable. Tech is not exempt from politics.
whyoh 2y ago
A performance comparison between WordPress and ClassicPress: https://www.tukutoi.com/whats-better-classicpress-or-wordpress-a-hands-on-comparison/ https://www.tukutoi.com/whats-better-classicpress-or-wordpre...
KayL 2y ago
WP plugins are very stable. It's their advantage.
deleted 2y ago
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kyriakos 2y ago
WordPress is popular for the same reason Windows is popular. User Inertia, wide availability, widespread support, cheap. WordPress is not bad, it has its purpose and works well. It's bad when you try to make it do things it wasn't meant to with dubious plugins. I made some money on WordPress and I understand why people started using it and why they still do. It's very hard to replicate the community support that took years to build.
aisyk 2y ago
pluxml is a good alternative : https://pluxml.org/ https://pluxml.org/
tenox 2y ago
https://github.com/tenox7/BloKi/ https://github.com/tenox7/BloKi/
eduction 2y ago
I think it’s funny he starts off by pointing to the controversy about WordPress’ CEO being a jerk and by the fourth paragraph he’s talking about how the CEO of the alternative CMS he recommends also has a reputation for being a jerk so you should host it elsewhere. At that point I closed the tab. Sort of reminds me of people fleeing Twitter/X due to not liking the new owner only to discover the people running Mastodon instances, BlueSky and uh Facebook Threads are not necessarily to their liking either. At a certain point I just decided to be ruthlessly utilitarian in my approach to vendors. I never need to like the ceo, founder, etc. I don’t even expect them to treat me well for very long, I just need a viable plan for when the relationship turns. The great thing about low expectations is they are so often exceeded.

149 points by pabs3 2y ago

theluketowers 2y ago

What about Winter CMS?

jszymborski 2y ago
Wasn't aware OctoberCMS had a FOSS fork. Looks neat!

joshdavham 2y ago

Out of these, what do you guys recommend?

manuelmoreale 2y ago
I personally jumped from Wordpress to Kirby years ago and never looked back but it obviously depends on the types of projects you work on. For my use case it works perfectly.

timetraveller26 2y ago

what about woodworking?

julienmarie 2y ago

Special mention to Processwire. Worked with it a few years ago and really loved it at the time. https://processwire.com/ https://processwire.com/ Craft is great but a bit slow in my tests. They have a really powerful e-commerce offer though and is really flexible.

possibleworlds 2y ago
+1 for ProcessWire. I am not doing freelance dev anymore but for the small set of sites I still maintain I love doing updates for the ProcessWire installs and dread it with every other project. Anyone shopping for Wordpress alternatives should definitely check it out. The only project I’ve tried recently that is as fun, flexible and productive is Astro.
jlahijani 2y ago
+999 for ProcessWire. It's my CMS of choice for 10 years straight and is actually a pretty good platform for web applications as well (with some limitations compared to something like Rails or Laravel since configuration is stored in the database). I made this 36-part video series comparing WordPress to ProcessWire which I recorded on-and-off between 2014-2018 and released it that year. Although that was a while ago, it's still mostly accurate since both systems are mature and haven't changed drastically in that time (this is before Gutenberg): https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOrdUWNK38ibz8U_5Vq4zSPZfvFKzUuiT https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOrdUWNK38ibz8U_5Vq4z... Also worth a read: https://processwire.com/about/wordpress-vs-processwire/ https://processwire.com/about/wordpress-vs-processwire/ For the JS devs, ProcessWire has a similar approach to Payload CMS from what I've seen (although ProcessWire dates back to 2003 and open-sourced in ~2010/11). Best CMS ever. :)
egeozcan 2y ago
Totally agree! Processwire is super simple for simple things and is super extensible if you need anything custom. There's nothing I couldn't do with it and PHP isn't even remotely my language of choice. It gets the job done with tremendous flexibility.
dmje 2y ago
Thanks for mentioning ProcessWire. I've heard of it but never looked. Just spent a couple of hours fiddling and I have to say - really like the look of this. Thank you for bringing it to my attention!
wvbdmp 2y ago
ProcessWire is great and it’s the perfect example for the OP’s main criterion “can be downloaded, dropped onto a server, and you’ll have a website”! One great thing about it is that that’s also how you update it. Download new version, replace a single directory on the server, and you’ll have the new version. For a WordPress alternative, however, ProcessWire is perhaps not batteries-included enough. Like many of the systems in this thread, it caters more to developers who want full control over their site. For someone who just needs a blog with maybe a contact form and wants to choose a nice “template” and be done with it, ProcessWire isn’t a good fit. While it has “site profiles”, it’s lacking a lot of traction in that area, as well as a consumer-oriented marketplace that’s nice to browse (screenshots, curation etc.). But for anyone who wants to build something more complex, it’s a great choice. Cozy little community, too.

pabs3 2y ago

Switching to a static site generator seems like the way to go for lots of sites, especially blog-only ones. Are there any graphical SSGs that non-technical users could run locally to generate a site and upload it to their web host?

jszymborski 2y ago
I haven't used it since forever ago, but Lektor [0] is this weird in between. You need to be able to pip install and run `lektor serve` in the terminal but most else is done in the browser. [0] https://www.getlektor.com/ https://www.getlektor.com/
- pabs3 2y ago
  Sounds more like WordPress than what I was thinking :)
- krapp 2y ago
  I used Lektor recently. I was OK but I found the editor UI awkward and things like tags and subjects difficult to manage, and there didn't seem to be much in the way of current support or a plugin ecosystem. Publishing directly to a server with Git push and only having html online was nice, though. I might go back to it. I switched to Wordpress but I blog so little it seems like overkill. AFAIK Lektor doesn't have a way to crosspost to Mastodon and I don't want to learn enough Python to write a plugin myself.
  - jszymborski 2y ago
    I used it not longer after it launched and it had (perhaps understandably) a lot of rough edges. I haven't bothered trying since I switched to Hugo.
burningChrome 2y ago
I've used Netlify for a while now for a lot of my basic static site customers. You can easily transfer a domain, they have automatic builds when you commit to several different source control vendors like Github or Gitlab. They have a ton of services and I was using them when they still a startup and Mathias used to personally answer your emails. Now they're pretty big and have a host of different services they offer. Their analytics are still in need of some help, but their services are rock solid and very, very affordable. They were really the first company to push the idea of JAMSTACK (Javascript, APIs, Markup) and have really been pushing that envelope ever since. They've also acquired several Y Combinator startups recently. https://www.netlify.com/ https://www.netlify.com/

synergy20 2y ago

is Drupal getting better for ordinary people to deploy? it was my choice 15 years ago it's sad python, rails,node never had a rival platform to replace WordPress over the years, long live php for the web

BarryMilo 2y ago
Doubt it, it mostly went more corporate over time.
JohnTHaller 2y ago
Drupal has gotten more difficult for 'ordinary' people to deploy. That's a big reason there are many times more sites still running Drupal 7 than there are running the current release: https://www.drupal.org/project/usage/drupal https://www.drupal.org/project/usage/drupal The complexity compared with something like WordPress is a big part of the difference in install base. Drupal powers under a million websites (I run 3 of those). WordPress powers something north of 450 million websites.
- tylershuster 2y ago
  It's hard to upgrade from Drupal 7 to Drupal 8, but it's really not hard to deploy anew. The "Drupal CMS" initiative is trying hard to lower the already low barrier to entry.
tylershuster 2y ago
I don't understand the "Drupal is hard" mentality on HN. Drupal is just as simple as WordPress to deploy. Unzip, plug in database credentials and go. It's better with composer, but there's some real prejudice against it. Drupal 7 is admittedly too complicated but the new Symfony-based Drupal is fun to develop. I used to use WordPress and after the first few months of Drupal I realized how much better it was at, like, everything, than WordPress is. It's been buttering my bread for 6 years now and I think it's better every release.
stiltzkin 2y ago
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raybb 2y ago

I've been wanting to setup SSG for a while now. However, if you want something hosted that is free and no fuss I've really been enjoying hashnode. Idk how long it'll last but it dumps all my blog posts into markdown files on GitHub and has worked great for me. Devs respond quickly to issues. Even bringing your own domain is free. Not sure how they plan to make money yet. https://blog.rayberger.org/ https://blog.rayberger.org/

tiffanyh 2y ago

TextPattern use to a thing like around the same time WP got started. It’s also PHP based. https://textpattern.com/ https://textpattern.com/

Brajeshwar 2y ago
If I remember correctly, TextPattern was done correctly compared to WordPress. Unfortunately, that meant it was more complex for most developers to go deeper. The community flocked to WordPress, and every other one became more of a niche. Didn't they also have a Markdown-ish writing style? I liked that, and I used it as a plugin for WordPress for a very long time. TextPatten went slow and now seems to have been chugging along well.

chalcolithic 2y ago

strange that no aws-based alternatives exist for low traffic websites cloudfront + lambda + dynamodb is free

robjan 2y ago
> The criteria for this list are "Can it be downloaded, dropped onto a server, and you'll have a website?"

yawnxyz 2y ago

I've just moved my stack Astro deployed on Deno Deploy and it's been very very fun and easy. Really like it. I just copied all my Svelte files over and it worked. I copied over all my Deno files and it worked. And it's building static pages onto Deno, effortlessly. And I'm just pulling in content from Notion and Airtable as CMS and caching on Deno KV, and that's also very very easy.

oidar 2y ago

If you are looking for a no-nonsense, simple blog platform consider Bear[1] - It's super simple to use, and has been solid for me for the past year. Plus the support (and dev - Herman Martinus here on HN[2]) is responsive and friendly. [1] https://bearblog.dev https://bearblog.dev [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=HermanMartinus https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=HermanMartinus

gloflo 2y ago
Emphasis on platform. > Bear Blog has been built as a platform and not as an individual blog generator. It is more like Substack than Hugo. Due to this it isn't possible to individually self-host a Bear Blog.
HermanMartinus 2y ago
Thanks for the shoutout! For clarity, as a sibling comment has pointed out: while Bear is open-source, it is a platform and not managed hosting of individual blogs. If you're interested in self-hosting something that looks like Bear, there's a free Hugo template[1]. If you're happy using a platform, then Bear is super fast and built with longevity in mind (at both the tech and organisational level). [1]https://themes.gohugo.io/themes/hugo-bearblog/ https://themes.gohugo.io/themes/hugo-bearblog/
- xNeil 2y ago
  Sharing the Hugo theme is a great move Herman. I'll be starting a Bearblog now, all thanks to this comment.

keiferski 2y ago

For developers, there are many alternatives, but for the vast majority of use cases, there really aren’t any. WordPress is popular because it’s a dead simple way to make a website that doesn’t require any technical skills - and has been this dead simple solution for almost the last two decades. Most of the popular hosts come with WP installed, so there is no need to install software on a server (a fairly “technical” thing to do.) Realistically the only alternative for these users is another website builder like Wix, Squarespace, or Shopify. The hosted version of Ghost is pretty good too and probably the single closest thing to WordPress.

qingcharles 2y ago
Plus the large plugin library.
- bigiain 2y ago
  For us, it's the huge existing user base of people who know how to do authoring/publishing in WordPress. (Even if they don't have the skills to understand what they're doing installing plugins sensibly, we mostly don't hand over Admin role accounts ion we don't have to.) I don't want to hand hold a small business owner through writing markdown or how to commit to git to get their homepage edited. I want to be able to tell them "Just ask around your staff or family or friends, someone will know how to update your wordpress site, or one of them will at least know somebody who can. Failing that, go to your local craft/hipster coffee place and ask anyone with a laptop open for suggestions."
deleted 2y ago
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Brajeshwar 2y ago

If one is looking for a simple/personal blog and wants to write in plain-text Markdown, one should consider Jekyll on GitHub Pages[1]. The beauty is that one does not need to worry about setting up Jekyll on the local machine. Just write and push to Github. If one wants to skip that, just go to GitHub and write there; a version of VSCode is built in there. This also allows one to carry (take out) their content anywhere on any platform that supports plain text (MarkDown). Browsers can also just render plain-text as it, so if you just drag-drop them on a server, it should render as your website. I have a pretty large personal site[2], and I hate Jekyll because it takes too long to compile locally, but I’m on it because I don’t let it interfere with my writing. As for a WordPress replacement/alternative, it is going to be pretty hard to find something as prolific and click-clacky easy as WordPress to start off. It has like two decades of the mother of all kitchen sink built-in for anyone to jump in and rummage something out it. Update/Edit: Github Pages has also become rock solid stable too. No downtime in the past 3+ years. 1. https://pages.github.com https://pages.github.com 2. https://brajeshwar.com/2021/brajeshwar.com-2021/ https://brajeshwar.com/2021/brajeshwar.com-2021/

tomjen3 2y ago
Its solid advice if that is your problem and if you are migrating from a standard wordpress. I ran into another problem - I wanted a static site[0]. I tried some of the static hosting engines, including Jekyll, but they always seemed to want to force my site into a blog format. Yeah with some work they could partially be twisted into what I wanted, but only partially. Do you know of a static website builder that builds websites, and not blogs? [0]: The difference to me is that my content should never have a date associated with it, and the landing page should be a landing page, not a list of recent pages.
- hombre_fatal 2y ago
  Build your website like you would normally and then crawl it to build a static html site. Years ago I used some npm library that was like a fancy `wget -r` for this purpose. I was generating a static site from an express server I made.
- 2y ago

aaronbrethorst 2y ago

Against all odds and expectations, Movable Type is apparently still around and a thing: https://github.com/movabletype/movabletype https://github.com/movabletype/movabletype

yellow_lead 2y ago

I don't see framer here but it seems like it's getting popular recently. Can anyone share their experience with it?

stiltzkin 2y ago
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rushabh 2y ago

Frappe Builder: https://frappe.io/builder https://frappe.io/builder https://github.com/frappe/builder https://github.com/frappe/builder Visual website designing + publishing, built on Frappe Framework

librasteve 2y ago

none of these look attractive to me … what about a clean fork of WordPress?

todotask 2y ago

You're going to encounter various limitations with the CMS that it was designed for. I'll say this once: if we need a complete rebuild in 2025 and beyond, the Astro web framework could be the core engine due to its unopinionated nature and support for many UI components, including the latest addition, VanJS. It's seem like a well designed to keep things as simple as possible and still open to community feedback. Of course, you could host it on Netlify, Cloudflare, and Vercel using adapters from Astro. Although it's not a traditional CMS, it's capable of serving as the core engine that should serve well for 99% of use cases out there.

WAT251922th 2y ago

[flagged]

kcrwfrd_ 2y ago

Payload is really nice: https://payloadcms.com https://payloadcms.com

mewc 2y ago

+1 to ghost. built in node, supports the standard stuff you'd expect and new school.

qingcharles 2y ago

I did what any regular (in)sane developer would do when faced with this type of problem: wrote my own from scratch...!

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

exodust 2y ago

> "I have not used Kirby in client work, but I hear only good things." Not a great idea to recommend something based on hearsay. There's good & bad things to hear about any CMS. One inexplicable decision by the Kirby team was to push their politics by "taking a stand" against Twitter, suddenly cutting off their account. This leaves you wondering if Kirby is abandoned software since their top post is from Jan 2023 announcing version 3. https://x.com/getkirby https://x.com/getkirby If you don't like Musk, why on Earth would you rattle the cages of your potential customers with such views? It's possible to use Twitter/x in the most minimal way, disable replies, post every blue moon. At least keep the latest version visible. Twitter is essentially an online feed of you business activities. From a potential customer point of view, Twitter is agnostic to "where is your software at" research. Ending your timeline in a principled huff, isn't smart. Meanwhile, in the article: > "Statamic.... I think if the cofounder hadn't brazenly endorsed a horrendously damaging politician, I'd have tried it." All aboard the facepalm express. Is it too much to ask to keep politics out of software recommendations and social media version announcement updates?

manuelmoreale 2y ago
> This leaves you wondering if Kirby is abandoned software since their top post is from Jan 2023 I mean, the project has an official website and a public repo on GitHub. I’m not sure why we’re expecting Twitter to be an official update channel. It clearly isn’t anymore.
- exodust 2y ago
  I mean, someone casually reading about CMS options or related topics on Twitter might see an old mention of Kirby. They click, see no new posts and move on. Obviously someone with intent to specifically look up Kirby, will go beyond their social media scrolling. I'm talking about the multi-tasking rapid-browsing people who give a seconds of attention to a possible lead. Why risk losing those leads because you "don't agree with XYZ"?
pbowyer 2y ago
More the problem with Kirby is the admin still using Vue 2, so if you use Vue 3 for everything else and want to make a plugin, you have to go back to how you used to write Vue and no longer do.

kmeisthax 2y ago

Matt Mullenweg is being an asshat about WP Engine (and in general) but that doesn't mean you have to jump off WordPress. That's actually the power of the GPL: it's enshittification resistant. The flipside of this is that you can't stop freeloading. In fact, freeloading is a feature, not a bug. Now, if Automattic had CLA ownership over 100% of WordPress, I'd actually be scared, because they could strip the GPL off of new releases and lock the system down. But as far as I'm aware WordPress's copyright ownership is distributed, so Automattic can't just change the license to the Fuck You, Pay Me Public License and rugpull the whole community. The worst part about this drama is that Matt's not even wrong. WP Engine is kinda shit[0]. But Matt's behavior is extremely unprofessional and he's making WP Engine into the victim of an extortion campaign. [0] If you're wondering, the thing that makes it shit is not that they disable revisions. It's that they have significant reliability issues, both with their shared and dedicated offerings, and their support teams do not have visibility into their systems to fix those issues.

tylershuster 2y ago

Drupal should be the obvious choice here. Still PHP-based, still fieldable entities, and a much saner data structure with infinite extensibility. It gets weird hate on HN so I expect that kind of pushback but hey, it's put food on my family's table for more than 6 years and powers some huge and popular sites so I'm not concerned.

kioleanu 2y ago
It gets weird hate because it has (had?) an insanely steep learning curve and no setup looked like the other. With wordpress at least, it's pretty consistent across plugins and implementations and very easy to pick up
- tylershuster 2y ago
  Must be "had" — I've used it since D8 first came out and while there's weirdness, it's never been anything beyond what WordPress threw at me. In terms of setup, it's just like — enter database credentials and start making pages. There's plenty of themes out here and HN users aren't stupid — everyone knows how to compile their own CSS and use composer if they want to.

p4bl0 2y ago

There's an obvious actual alternative to WordPress that's missing here: Dotclear. When I say "actual alternative" I mean a web based blog engine rather than something entirely different like a static site generator that transpile markdown files into HTML web page and an RSS feed from the command line that you then have to rsync to your server or make use of the continuous integration service of a software forge to rebuild on the server side. I'm not saying this is a bad workflow, just that I don't feel it really counts as an alternative to WordPress for most people (you know, non-technical people). I ended up using Dotclear for my own personal blog after years of using home-made blog engines. By default, I was going for WordPress initially, but configuring it and creating a custom theme that looked like I wanted it to look like was a mess. I felt like I had to learn a whole new technology stack instead of being able to use my PHP, HTML, and CSS skills. In comparison, Dotclear was a breeze to work with, and after days scratching my head on the complexity of WordPress, it took me maybe like two hours to get where I wanted with Dotclear, including the time to discover and installing the software. I enjoy it very much since then! See https://dotclear.org/ https://dotclear.org/ for more information. Anecdoticaly, Dotclear is older than WordPress (2002 vs 2003) :).

pkphilip 2y ago

Interesting to see that some of the biggest and closest alternatives to Wordpress are missing from the list: * Joomla * Typo3 * Drupal

lfaw 2y ago

Not mentioned in OP: https://getgrav.org/ https://getgrav.org/ I used it for a project once and both me and the client were happy. It compares to kirby.

4ndrewl 2y ago

Will be interesting to review this in 5-10 years to see how many of these are still viable and whether there's a fashion tax to pay by having to switch.

openrisk 2y ago

Its telling about the stagnation of Web technology that there isnt a real Wordpress alternative. You'd think that after all those decades there would be a modern, open source solution that offers the same and more functionality (not... less, looking at you SSG wanabees) but with a cleaner, safer and easier to use stack that is liked by both technical and non-technical people. Stands to reason that such a leap forward in web publishing should be technically possible (the requirements are clear and dont need AGI) but there is also some truth in the saying "its the economy stupid, thats why you can't have good things": There is no economic incentive in this direction in the modern digital landscape.

threatofrain 2y ago
It's not about web technology, it's about popularity. It's like saying it's damning to technology that we don't have a serious YouTube contender. People don't just want technology, they want to be on the most popular thing. There are consequences to popularity. For example, if you need help it's a lot easier to find both self-help guides and technical people to help you. There are a lot more extensions or 3rd-party tooling. Even if there are exploits there are a lot more eyes on the problem and fixes come sooner. So there are other WordPress alternatives, they're just less popular with all the consequences that come with being a minority player.
- openrisk 2y ago
  Yes, I agree there is the popularity / network effects barrier. But when the advantage offered by technology is irresistible these barriers can be overcome. Tiktok is case in point and arguably it has become a pretty serious youtube contender (whether one likes the implications or not...)
timeon 2y ago
All modern solutions (including php+Laravel) are not possible to use on basic cheap shared hosting - where the most 'self-host' web still is.

nicbou 2y ago

I used Craft for years for All About Berlin. I edit this website for a living and Craft served me really well. It was an elegant way to set a content structure and proved quite flexible in that regard. Eventually I switched to a custom-made SSG because clicking around an admin area is very slow, and because of serious bugs with the WYSIWYG editor led to content loss that was very hard to fix. Editing plain text with familiar purpose-built software, and deploying with source control and branches is incredibly valuable. I wrote more about the reason and benefits of the switch here: https://nicolasbouliane.com/projects/ursus https://nicolasbouliane.com/projects/ursus

maurits 2y ago

Any recommendations for a self hosted back-end that is images, photography only? Instagram seems to have taken over this space.

ruthmarx 2y ago

I'm a fan of Wagtail, built on Django. Much more setup to get configured, but it's far more customizable and stable once you do.

openrisk 2y ago
wagtail is really not ready for prime time, maybe by design. in some respects its easier to use the django admin...
- ruthmarx 2y ago
  No idea where you are getting that from. It's used in production on plenty of sites.
  - openrisk 2y ago
    "used in production" is not the same as being a serious wordpress alternative. Would bet that none of those production deployments are without some non-negligible developer time investment. On top of that (assuming that extra investment is possible / desirable) the abstractions layered on top of django are quite opaque and have a steep learning curve. Having to code standard CMS functionalities becomes an eye-rolling exercise.
    - ruthmarx 2y ago
      > "used in production" is not the same as being a serious wordpress alternative. You only said you thought it wasn't ready for prime time, which I think a reasonable interpretation is that you were saying you didn't think it was ready for production use. > Would bet that none of those production deployments are without some non-negligible developer time investment. That's the thing, I think the time invested is pretty negligible. Especially when compared to maintaining wordpress and having to deal with plugin craziness. > Having to code standard CMS functionalities becomes an eye-rolling exercise. You only really have to setup models for pages, tags, categories etc, after that the editor is incredibly functional.
- 2y ago

brylie 2y ago

Cross-posting here: I can highly recommend Wagtail CMS: https://wagtail.org/ https://wagtail.org/ It’s based on Python/Django and has an excellent developer and user experience. They pay a lot of attention to detail, including a block-based content editor, similar to Gutenberg, and first class accessibility support.

invisiblea 2y ago

Sanity is a great headless CMS with a generous free tier package https://www.sanity.io/pricing https://www.sanity.io/pricing Paired with caching/static frontend, it's more than enough to power small to medium traffic sites.

johnchristopher 2y ago

That list isn't deep enough. These are CMS alternatives, not WordPress alternatives. I need a WordPress alternative to/with the following requirements: - self-hostable - opensource core (paid plugins are not a problem) - so it can be installed and intensively tested without shelling too much money just for R&D - has ACF equivalent - has a visual composer à la Gutenberg, a middle-ground between WordPad editing interface and Divi/Elementor - so the marketing/press department can push content fast - REST API - to hydrate stuff - optional: needs to have been around for 5 years - optional: needs to still be around in 5 years Ghost has no ACF apparently (https://forum.ghost.org/t/custom-fields-for-posts/1124/46 https://forum.ghost.org/t/custom-fields-for-posts/1124/46 and https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/issues/9020 https://github.com/TryGhost/Ghost/issues/9020) and Astro is too custom as of now and I don't want another Gatsby (too short-lived).

KayL 2y ago
100% TRUE. Also, a simple and workable e-cart I tried many alternatives. Their upgrade path is painful.

deleted 2y ago

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ThinkBeat 2y ago

I dont think the political rant on there is offputting and childish drama. Having a world where ecochamber credentials and political adherens is as far from an open and inclusive society.

oddb0d 2y ago

Drupal is the dark horse here, especially with the new can-run-in-your-browser Drupal CMS, try it out here: http://dgo.to/drupal_cms http://dgo.to/drupal_cms Out-of-the-box you've got a responsive theme, built-in accessibility, multilingual capabilities, a security team, and the accumulation of 23 years of tried-and-tested code. The efforts that are being put into this new product are making it as easy to use as any other CMS, which is a huge leap for Drupal. Add into the equation things like the new AI initiative (http://dgo.to/artificial_intelligence_initiative http://dgo.to/artificial_intelligence_initiative) where you can literally configure the site through chat as founder of Drupal, Dries Buytaert, recently demonstrated asking AI to create a categorisation of wine tour events based on the top 20 wine regions (https://bit.ly/wine-tours-taxonomy https://bit.ly/wine-tours-taxonomy) I have a feeling that, based on my 21 years of using it, I think Drupal's going to surprise quite a few people over the next year. I don't just use it as a CMS, I leverage native commerce (http://dgo.to/commerce http://dgo.to/commerce) and CRM (http://dgo.to/contacts http://dgo.to/contacts) modules in order to have a fully integrated framework which, architecturally, enables me to create functionality that would be expensive if even possible using separate systems. There's even a no-code suite Drupal ECA (http://dgo.to/eca http://dgo.to/eca). I could go on...

slhck 2y ago

Since when is the WordPress ecosystem this … bad? I built WP websites 10-15 years ago and it was a quite straightforward experience back then. These days, there seems to be no around themes and plugins that all have very limited free versions, and constantly nag you about upgrading to the pro version, in a million different styles of banners and popups. Hosting providers have made it easier to deploy WordPress in a one-click manner, but anything beyond a basic page (sending email, backups, contact forms) already turns into a nightmare. No thanks!

DavidDarnes 2y ago

Hey there, author here. Lots of good suggestions here, but a lot of them are for complex development stacks. My criteria was something that can be installed and ran without having to do much wiring up. That being said I do love me an SSG and content API, my own site is Eleventy hooked up to Ghost. Also saw some suggestions like Drupal and Joomla, I may add these but from personal experience I've almost always been migrating away from them. There's a reason they're popular though. Ps. Sorry if you got upset about the political spin, but it's not escapable. Tech is not exempt from politics.

whyoh 2y ago

A performance comparison between WordPress and ClassicPress: https://www.tukutoi.com/whats-better-classicpress-or-wordpress-a-hands-on-comparison/ https://www.tukutoi.com/whats-better-classicpress-or-wordpre...

KayL 2y ago

WP plugins are very stable. It's their advantage.

deleted 2y ago

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kyriakos 2y ago

WordPress is popular for the same reason Windows is popular. User Inertia, wide availability, widespread support, cheap. WordPress is not bad, it has its purpose and works well. It's bad when you try to make it do things it wasn't meant to with dubious plugins. I made some money on WordPress and I understand why people started using it and why they still do. It's very hard to replicate the community support that took years to build.

aisyk 2y ago

pluxml is a good alternative : https://pluxml.org/ https://pluxml.org/

tenox 2y ago

https://github.com/tenox7/BloKi/ https://github.com/tenox7/BloKi/

eduction 2y ago

I think it’s funny he starts off by pointing to the controversy about WordPress’ CEO being a jerk and by the fourth paragraph he’s talking about how the CEO of the alternative CMS he recommends also has a reputation for being a jerk so you should host it elsewhere. At that point I closed the tab. Sort of reminds me of people fleeing Twitter/X due to not liking the new owner only to discover the people running Mastodon instances, BlueSky and uh Facebook Threads are not necessarily to their liking either. At a certain point I just decided to be ruthlessly utilitarian in my approach to vendors. I never need to like the ceo, founder, etc. I don’t even expect them to treat me well for very long, I just need a viable plan for when the relationship turns. The great thing about low expectations is they are so often exceeded.