Concrete CMS vs. Modern Campus CMS

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.

OU Campus is the best CMS product I've seen, especially when you have a large organization with less staff and resources. Also, its power, if one team likes marketing, handles all pages and that saves a lot of time and effort. I strongly like the components/snippets. Tags all dynamic modules.

• 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).

Incentivized

• The JustEdit feature makes updating content a breeze. With a small staff, we rely on others to update their content. OU Campus makes it easy.
• Site-wide find and replace. I use the site-wide find and replace feature for all sorts of things - links, enrollment numbers, department names. It's really helpful.
• Customer service. The staff at OU Campus answers questions quickly and is always willing to discuss the most effective ways to take on new projects.

Incentivized

• Allow end users to clear cache when updating pages.
• Needs a few more built in forms.
• The CMS is not multilingual by default. Even though I managed to 'hack' it so, it would be nice to have it included.
• It'd be nice to make use of custom PHP modules through shortcodes more straight forward. It seems the hooks are a bit contrived.

• Formatting. The page can sometimes look very differently when published than what it looks like while editing. Some improvements have been made in this area with version 10 however.
• Find and replace. The command+F needs to find text on the page while editing, not present an actual find and replace dialog box. At least give me the option to simply "find" the text I'm looking for. The dialog box just gets in the way most of the time.
• There is not a way to "unpublish" items. At least not a way that I can think of. I would like the ability to pull a page offline without deleting it. Seems like it should be done simpler.

Incentivized

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.

We renewed our contract with OmniUpdate-OU Campus for reasons previously mentioned and also the well-provided tech support received from the company.

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.

Incentivized

Once you've been training how to use it, it's really easy to use it on a daily basis

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

The support at OmniUpdate is one of the reasons we continued with the company when time for renewal of contract.

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.

The support team at OmniUpdate is available to assisting campuses with implementation

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.

Incentivized

Before using OU Campus Content Management System we were using Adobe's DreamWeaver suite for creating and maintaining web pages. The core web development environment was cumbersome to set up. Non-tech people also had trouble understanding how the web works and how web pages are created/maintained. OU Campus Content Management System solved all problems 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.

Incentivized

• The positive impact of OU Campus is that is has increased employee efficiency and improved customer service among staff and students.