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Ask DN: Wordpress vs. Craft CMS

over 9 years ago from Jess Eddy, Product Designer / Hacker

  • Steve AdamsSteve Adams, over 9 years ago

    I've been using Craft since before it was released publicly, and I can say with all certainty that Craft is the best CMS I've used professionally or experimented with personally.

    I've built sites with Joomla, Wordpress, EE, Perch, ModX, Drupal, Statamic, and a few others. None of these compare with the freedom and flexibility that Craft offers.

    With Craft, you're not stuck in a WP loop, Joomla content structure, or Drupal spaghetti of plugins just to do something basic.

    After learning to swim in Craft, there is not much I can conceive of that would be difficult accomplish. The freedom of being able to add a few lines of code that would normally require several plugins in the other CMS's is very liberating.

    As I look back on older projects of mine not using Craft, I find myself thinking of how convoluted those solutions were compared to how I do things now.

    Craft certainly is not for everyone, if you're a Open Source monkey who just slaps things together and hopes for the best, you're probably not going to 'get' what Craft is all about initially. But if you're willing to learn some best practices and how Craft is intended to be used, then you will find yourself with the 'god-like' powers of a developer whose default answer is an honest and un-panicked 'YES, we can do that.'

    If you're working with any other CMS, then you owe it to yourself and your career to try Craft. If not, enjoy figuring out how you're going to implement all that functionally in the RFP, w/o having to hack away at things just to pull it off.

    Simply put, Craft bends to your will, not the otherway around as is the case with most other CMS's

    7 points
    • Nathan HueningNathan Huening, over 9 years ago (edited over 9 years ago )

      ^ This (x 1 million)

      My reply from yesterday: https://news.layervault.com/comments/57682

      1 point
    • Matt ScorteMatt Scorte, over 9 years ago

      If been really struggling with the question of which CMS to use, and when to even use a CMS.

      Does Craft have a steep learning curve? I am more a designer, but I still learn code to make my sites. Would it be a good thing to learn. I did an Ask DN and I was told best practice is to write everything static and then implement the CMS. Would this be how I would do in in Craft?

      1 point
      • Jake ChapmanJake Chapman, over 9 years ago (edited over 9 years ago )

        Twig has a little bit of a learning curve but that's only because of how much functionality and control you have. With other templating languages there really isn't a learning curve, but you look at the amount of control you have and its saddening.

        Take a peek over at http://twig.sensiolabs.org/

        Just a super quick example showing how to loop through entries from lets say the "Blog" section.

        {% paginate craft.entries.section('blog') as entries %} // Check if there are any entries {% if entries|length %} {{ entry.title }} {% else %} // No entries <p>No entries SUCKA!</p> {% endif %} {% endpaginate %}

        What's really awesome about Twig is there is no Parse Order, so if I wanted to have an partial of what a specific type of blog article looks like, it super simple with no needing to figure out of the right data will be in the included partial.

        {% paginate craft.entries.section('blog') as entries %} // Check if there are any entries {% if entries|length %} {% if entry.type == "photoarticle" %} {% include "_partials/photoarticle.html" %} {% else %} {% include "_partials/regular-blog.html" %} {% endif %} {% else %} // No entries <p>No entries SUCKA!</p> {% endif %} {% endpaginate %}
        0 points
        • Matt ScorteMatt Scorte, over 9 years ago (edited over 9 years ago )

          I definitely need to research it more. Didn't realize is was $300. Might be a lot for me, being in college and all.

          I guess I can use the free version until I get bigger clients.

          0 points
          • Nathan HueningNathan Huening, over 9 years ago (edited over 9 years ago )

            The $199 Client version will work for you in almost cases: the Pro really is everything but the kitchen sink. But honestly, does the cost matter that much? I mean, it's a line item expense to the client; you're not paying it out of pocket.

            If your client is not expecting charges in addition to your actual production work, you're not setting expectations right. You'll need to acquire photographs (stock or custom?), maybe hire an illustrator or copywriter, purchase a web license for a font, certainly software costs are factored in... You can't be expected to do good work with shitty inputs ("garbage in, garbage out").

            Put another way: if $300 is too high a license fee for your clients to pay, you need better clients. That's what, 3 billable hours? Just add the time to your production estimate.

            0 points
            • Matt ScorteMatt Scorte, over 9 years ago

              Yeah I don't think 300 is a big price when working with clients. Right not I am in the beginning phases, where I am doing personal projects, and a site for my church. So $300 for me now looks like a lot, but I think in the future, if I do a lot more of this, it wouldn't be a big deal.

              0 points
      • Nathan HueningNathan Huening, over 9 years ago

        In general, yes -- that's the best practice. If you're going to implement a photo gallery, let's say, then you'd do a few of them as static entries with asset, title, caption, date, etc. Mark it up straight. Then, replace all of them with the template code that generates each entry which, of course, will be different for each CMS. But that's the gist.

        0 points