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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WebWave
Score 9.0 out of 10
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WebWave — an alternative for agencies and freelancers for creating custom websites for clients with the support of CMS. Using CMS with no sacrifices WebWave is a CMS platform that gives a designer precision up to 1 px in every single detail just like in more sophisticated graphic programs such as Photoshop while remaining a drag and drop software. This is to make creating websites much faster without loosing on details. Spend less time talking WebWave…
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.
Well suited: Small businesses and entrepreneurs: WebWave is an excellent option for small businesses and entrepreneurs who need a professional-looking website without spending a lot of time and money. It's easy to use, customizable, and offers fast load times and responsive design. Less appropriate: Large e-commerce websites: If you're looking to create a large e-commerce website with a vast number of products and advanced features, WebWave may not be the best option. Its e-commerce functionality is limited compared to other website builders, and it may not be able to accommodate the needs of a large-scale online store. Also, if you need much coding, you would rather have it with something that is wordpress-based.
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).
WebWave's site builder is the platform's truly innovative feature. I've never come across another service that deploys a layer-based approach in web design, as most of them usually deploy a grid-based system. This is an incredible alteration that ensures WebWave behaves much like a traditional graphic design tool, thereby resulting in an experience that is a lot more intuitive and instinctive. I believe this has the potential to radically change the way people approach no-code web design.
WebWave provides automatic, daily backups and a free SSL certificate for every website. This results in excellent security.
WebWave's support team is first-class! I had some teething-issues in the beginning, but the support team quickly got me back on track.
WebWave's community/forum is an excellent place to vote and request new features. This proves the development team is committed to making WebWave better by listening to their users.
Some scope for improvement in UX (colors are not very appealing). It is simple to use but design is a little dated. Especially in the builder section, I'd like to see modern design for buttons and maybe gradients also: as this is where visual motivation is also important
Some edits take effect only after pressing OK. That should be eliminated as it's an unnecessary addition. It's also kind of annoying to do that again and again, which can add up to a lot as we do so many small tweaks while building the website.
Few things (maybe glitches) in design. The rectangle below the footer was uneditable for me. I spent quite some time trying to figure it out so I'm convinced it's a glitch.
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.
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.
1. The support person does not seem to understand the issues, and seems like they go off to talk to somebody and revert back every 5 to 10 minutes. It takes up a lot of time. 2. There is a lack of reading material to address simple issues like changing the website name in the dashboard, pasting a code, etc.
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.
WordPress is a more flexible and adaptive content management system than Webwave. In addition to the functionalities that are already built-in, I am unable to add any customizable plugins or add-ons. However, in the majority of cases, the inherent features of Webwave are sufficient for developing a website that serves its intended purpose. Webwave also makes it possible for you to add animations and the appearance of each of your design elements, whereas WordPress builders require additional plugins in order for users to access most of such capabilities. Webwave has several essential design features available internally, thus saving money and time.
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.
