'Lite' CMS or just WordPress it? what do you do for simple sites?

[damon]

I want to make a website for a small business. It will be largely content management, and not really need all the hooplah of WordPress.

Just client content management (file uploading, text editing) and some customizable content types. I’m comfortable with PHP and CSS/HTML/JS, but I don’t want to homebrew a CMS.

I know WordPress decently, but coding around hooks and all the backwards compatibility for everything is fairly annoying, plus all the considerations to make anything customizable from a user interface. I like the idea of just setting up templates , content types, and making templates for everything.

I’ve been looking at a few lighter footprint CMSs and right now http://bolt.cm/ looks pretty cool. Pico seemed neat as well, but requires too much technical know-how out of the users.

Or I could just use wordpress and not worry about ‘backing the wrong horse’

What do you guys do for things like this?

[Senff]

I would personally use WordPress anyway. It’s what I know (and I don’t want to go through the whole process of learning a completely different CMS again), it’s easy to customize and expand (just in case that’s needed at a later stage) and for the end user it’s quite friendly.

WordPress is great for just setting up templates , content types, and making templates for everything, and you don’t really HAVE to use all the advanced options. But it’s nice that’s it’s there and that you’ll have the option later.

Just my opinion!

[chrisburton]

it’s easy to customize

I actually feel quite the opposite about WordPress when it comes to customization. It seems quite difficult compared to other CMS’s. Especially when using custom post types or custom fields and adding all that code into functions.php.

With Kirby, which is perfect for many different types of sites, you don’t have to deal with all that bulk file system they’ve got going on. You can add custom post types and fields so easily. (See how to add custom fields below).

client = name of custom field label = name of the label type = text or textarea

Result:

to output that code, all you have to do is this:

<span>Client:</span>
    <?php echo $page->client() ?>
</span>

<span>Art Direction:</span>
    <?php echo $page->art_direction() ?>
</span>

which returns this:

[damon]

I was looking at Kirby and it looks quite neat. However, I don’t like FTP for my CRUD.. I would like a backend.. whether or not it modifies a database or the files directly.

Agree that wp custom post types are not straightup straightforward.. as someone used to some other PHP frameworks they seem unnecessarily kludgy.

[chrisburton]

Would be helpful if my markup was valid.

@damon You are aware that Kirby comes with the Panel? Similar to the WordPress admin section.

[damon]

was not.. they keep going on about how it’s a flat file CMS and in the FAQ he talks about training his clients to use http://FTP..

[chrisburton]

@Damon Below is my blog page section of the ‘Panel‘. Of course there are several other part to the panel not shown. You should take some time to check out Kirby.

[magicspon]

ExpressionEngine is my personal favourite…

Perch is lovely…

And Concrete5 is pretty sweet.

And wordpress. meh! can’t stand the bugger! ;)

[kaffekop]

What about http://processwire.com/ ?

I started using it sometime last year. I never really liked the way wp does things and sometimes its to “much work” to build stuff in codeigniter/laravel.

I don’t know how much more lightweight it is then wp – but i like the way it does things much better :) For smaller sites i mainly use processwire now.

[finnaliajessic]

I prefer using wordpress, they have many plugins out there that support every design that you want. In addition, premium plugin also developed to add beautiful design, and good for your small businness with SEO plugin that can help boost your ranking on Mr.G

[Author]

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