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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Siteglide
Score 9.0 out of 10
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Siteglide is a content management software offering from the company of the same name headquartered in Aldermaston.
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.
As already mentioned, migrating websites from Adobe Business Catalyst, or any other platform is a strength. Using the Siteglide CLI, websites can be migrated as a static site to Siteglide, thus greatly reducing the amount of work necessary for the migration. Also, as long as developers are acquainted with HTML, CSS, Liquid, and Javascript, building sites with Siteglide can be done rapidly using their Siteglide Studio site builder. One of the additional strengths of Siteglide is Webapps. These can be easily used to provide the display and manipulation of dynamic data. The site can be designed so that users can change information without knowing anything about the underlying code. It allows a form-driven way to update site pages.
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).
Billing plans occasionally cost more than competition, mainly because of the way Platform OS works
"Drag and Drop" website building and maintenance could be improved in order to compete with other site-builders. Less reliance on knowing HTML, CSS, Liquid, Javascript, etc. would be a good direction to go in the future.
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.
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.
There could be an improvement for "non-programmers" and drag and drop editing. However, Siteglide's target market of website development agencies is well served and a great fit. Sites can be migrated from other platforms quickly and easily. New responsive websites can be developed quickly using Siteglide Studio and then robust functionality can be built out quickly and reliably. There is a wide range of features included in Siteglide and more features and upgrades are being rapidly added. The environment is built on a stable and performance-oriented platform. This allows agencies to provide excellent service on a worldwide basis.
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.
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.
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.
Siteglide knocks the socks off Duda in terms functionality, it's eCommerce isn't a match for Shopify (yet) but it's got a lot more flexibility and functionality than Shopify which comes up short if businesses want to do more than sell products...and versus WordPress, well, it's just much more professional and doesn't fall on its arse.
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.
