Concrete CMS (formerly Concrete5) is a free and open source, PHP built content management system for content on the web and also for intranets. It is optimized to support the creation of online magazines and newspapers.
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Jive
Score 8.5 out of 10
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Jive Software, part of the Aurea family of customer experience solutions, provides the gateway to an organization's most important assets – its knowledge and people. Jive's interactive intranet solution promises to connect people, information and ideas to help businesses outpace their competitors. The vendor says the product has more than 30 million users worldwide across every industry, and is consistently recognized as a leader by top analyst firms.
Suitable if you are part of small to large scale companies or web-houses which have PHP developers and frontend engineers with some budgets. [Also suitable if] you or your client want to build a website that requires some features or uniqueness [and needs] some customization and freedom. Additionally suitable if you want this project to be DevOps based project or if the project requires very tight security and is inside of a closed network.
It's definitely worth considering Jive for the type of application we've developed i.e. a central shared repository for all employees to host and discuss information. I can't say I have ever used a superior tool, but they may exist. I'm just not sure I would want to use it exclusively for file hosting, though. It does integrate with various other tools, so perhaps it would be fine if used in conjunction with another tool for that purpose.
As a dev, the Page object (coupled with page attributes, nav menus and page lists) makes structuring a website or web app a dream. The separation of page templates from page types also helps, the former being about layout while the latter is more conceptual.
As an admin, you pretty much have as much control as the developers of the site decide to give you.
The versioning system allows admins to roll changes back and work on changes before publishing them.
The permissions system is exceptionally powerful, allowing roles and/or individual users to be included or excluded from each permission.
The attributes system allows pages, files and users to be given custom properties of various types (e.g. text, image, colour).
Presence of Russian language (localization can be independently established)
You can configure several information tapes with different themes. One for work, the second for communication
A newly-arrived network user immediately receives a prepared block for beginners. After completing several game tasks, the user will receive the basics of using Jive.
There is a template for each scenario. There is even a template for planning R&D, and there are more than twenty of them.
Integrates with MS Office, Google Drive, Google Docs
There are all platforms (even Winphone and blackberry)
Its a very solid, very consistent package that never lets you down or leaves you frustrated. It gets a 10/10 because its so much better than anything else currently available. It also gets a 10/10 because, even if not compared to others, it does not leave you wanting for features or functionality. It is an excellent piece of software that will answer almost every CMS need.
There are always external factors that can impact this decision but currently, the Jive platform is maintaining its lead in the market place in this area. If the innovation in this space by Jive continues, then this number will remain high. Integration with other systems and adaptability to changes in the market or in client needs will also make this decision hard to predict more then 6 months into the future
I have used it on over 30 projects in the past 3 years and it's still a pleasure to work in. Doesn't always have all the answers, no CMS does, but I still find it very easy to use from prototyping to working to final project. Also there is no problem working on a localhost then moving to a live site, like there is with WordPress. It's my go to app in my CMS quiver.
It was harder to use that expected. The admin needs to be code savvy to truly customize the system. And users need to trained on the system and the setup. Trainings and monitoring need to continue to enforce use.
Since it's not tied to a central server (other than for authorizing updates and assigning licenses to specific sites), it's available pretty much 100% of the time.
Uptime was OK. But there was one day that the system crashed for a whole day. Our company was unable to operate. And all the plugins to word/excel froze causing those systems to freeze.
Jive posted a statement to the media saying all customers were up, but we were not.
The site works extremely well, the front end flies, searches and form submissions are very fast indeed. The reason its a 9 not a ten? the back end can be a little slow at times, and this is unfair, because for the backend to be so amazing, it has to do a huge amount of work!
Concrete5 is open-source and has an incredibly strong, polite, and supportive community. You can get an answer to nearly anything you want to do with Concrete5 by googling for it, searching the Concrete5 discussion forums or stack overflow, or posting your question to the forum. Members are very courteous and do not look down on those with less knowledge. And answers are always quick, informative, and supportive.
They did an OK job when I needed them. Except for the one day the system went down. Jive pointed the finger at the hosting company, and the hosting company pointed the finger at Jive. No reliable information came to us.
Jive online training is there. It is OK/average. I feel some other companies are doing better. It is not a piece that is required to have a successfully implementation, but it could be useful to improve it
Build off of an existing theme to speed up the creation of custom designed themed. Bootstrap is a good one but there are many others that are probably much simpler to build from than the Bootstrap one was. Make sure you host on a Unix/Linux server so you don't have to install PHP or MySQL separately. It's just smoother on those platforms.
WordPress at the time was riddled with security breaches in the news and while Concrete5 was smaller (and therefore a smaller attack vector), after eleven years of use, Concrete5 has only had one published incident with an add-on that resolved within hours and with excellent communication. You can talk to the CEO and the CTO (or the rest of the team). They are very engaged and you're working with a small company of people who care, not a call-center with people just waiting to go home.
We had a Google phone number set up before and Jive was a lot better option than that. It is more consistent and can be configured much easier and with more advanced settings. Additionally, based on the pricing as well as working with the rep on our account, it was a perfect option for us
Concrete5 is the customer-facing side of our business. It's where we host the site that potential customers see before they choose to purchase and create an account with us. We are able to keep that site clean, user-friendly, and with a lot of available options for customers to interact with thanks to Concrete5
The ability to have multiple users and admins for the site means that we all members of our team can go in and create new content, fix or troubleshoot issues, and edit the site easily.
Our CRM isn't directly integrated with Concrete5, so when customers go to make a purchase with us, they have to leave our Concrete5 site.
reduce amount of files/documents scattered & lost across shared drives
increased discovery, awareness and interaction of historically more separated individuals & team functions across the organisation
from an IT perspective, we've benefited from improved IT operations (e.g. troubleshooting info shared and easily searched/found with all team members - such that even junior team members can solve technical problems outside of business hours, lessening the burden for standby/call-in for more senior team members)
