Happy Birthday WordPress

[applejack]

Happy Birthday WordPress!!!

WP apparently powers nearly 20% of all websites, Why not CMSMS???

Debate...

[Simon66]

Hi Applejack,
I don't know if I can answer the question, but I've recently had a run of clients with Wordpress experience.
So we built their sites and carefully set the permissions to create a very user friendly admin experience.
With half an hour to 1 hour training, they were all raving about how intuitive CMSms was to use, they could change everything they needed to change, and they couldn't stuff it up if they tried (almost).

Their experiences with previous Wordpress sites had been constantly problematic and they found the UI to be very complicated.

I should be getting a few good usability testimonials very soon...

Simon66

[uniqu3]

@applejack

It's funny how everything is compared to WP, where everyone keeps forgetting that WP's budget plays in another league than CMSMS and don't know how often this has to be stated and repeated and told but comparing WP to CMSMS is like comparing Apples with Bananas.

Now think about it that WP started back in 2001 actually as b2/cafelog blog system and based on it WP was born in 2003, that is a few years of development advantage and possibly better marketing start, where CMSMS was born in 2004 from scratch with beta releases until 2005 ran by one man doing it all from 0!

You are more than welcome to find companies that will sponsor CMSMS development with WP's budget, then that handful of CMSMS Team volunteers spending their free time to give you a working system can concentrate on CMSMS full time instead of feeding their families with client work.

@Simon66

Thank you for your feedback, that is why i chose CMSMS, it is simple, intuitive but still powerful enough.

[staartmees]

WP is a very good system for a blog, but a hell as cms. Ordening pages and subpages is totally unclear, even with what they call an advanced page manager. Also compare CMSMS templates with those for WP. WP or CMSMS? It depends on what kind of website you're making/having.

[applejack]

Hi Guys

The question is not about whether or not CMSMS is better than WP, I know it is, but why it is not as popular.

Uniqu3 I take your point about the budget but as a professional web producer I see increasingly other web agencies using WP as their system of choice and so in that sense it is the competition and therefore a valid question to pose for debate.

So to turn the question around what do people think can be done to increase the popularity of CMSMS ?

[uniqu3]

WP has large "popular" user base and blogs (like davidwalsh, css-tricks, line-25, noupe... just to name few), known designers, developers showing that they use WP and there is a plethora of Blogs about "How to run a website with WP" or "How to create a template for WP" that is one reason, just try Google search and you will see.

Then there is plethora of theme sites, or PSd to HTML services and so on, that would be reason two.

Regarding agencies, it's simple, there are plenty agencies (not small ones) that use WP for exactly the reason two named above, just go to for example themeforest and buy a WP template for 40$ then charge your client for WP installation, content, few modifications and whatever like 30X of what you payed for theme.
It's a good deal isn't it?

Or compare CMSMS to world of OS's like OSX and Linux, where OSX would be WP with a Fanboy (no offense to anyway) religion, with plenty of "one click do automated stuff for me i don't know about" apps and CMSMS as Linux where you would be put in a geek league (no offense to anyone) where you can choose what distro you want, how you want it to look like or behave or do with it whatever you want.

Hope that answers your question.

[applejack]

That's more of an argument as to why I should be using WP rather than how the profile of CMSMS can be increased.

[psy]

IMHO...

Seems like the eternal question.

A few years ago I had vigorous discussions with a client about whether CMSMS or Joomla when Joomla was all the fashion.

They conceded and went with me and CMSMS. A few months ago, they had a website built for free in WP. Within a month they asked me to rebuild it (chargeable) in CMSMS.

WP is not intuitive. It has lots of addins (modules/plugins/widgets, call them what you will) BUT when something goes wrong, something needs to changed, WP falls over.

You cannot rely on a system that depends almost totally on 3rd Party stuff or serious PHP knowledge to work in the most basic sense for an informational website.

At the time of my 'vigorous discussions' with my client, it seemed to me that Joomla developers made most of their money out of selling their plugins to other developers. WP has gone the same way.

In the rush to get the sites live that were not purely blogs, the agencies forgot why they were building the sites in the first place, ie to deliver a good product to their clients.

CMSMS does not have all the answers to every client's website requirements. However and by crikey it is good at what it does.

When the client needs more, build a site in the app that delivers the best solution then integrate CMSMS. See my Tip at "http://forum.cmsmadesimple.org/viewtopi ... =4&t=66774" for how to do it.

Yes, CMSMS could do with much more marketing. Just remember that in the long term, you will be responsible for supporting what you deliver quickly and cheaply today.

It's my experience that ongoing support costs me far more than the initial site build.

[gocreative]

In my opinion, the number one reason CMS Made Simple doesn't compete with WordPress and many other CMS platforms is its design.

As we're all designers/developers, I think it's fair to say that if you arrive at a website and it looks amateur/dated, you're more likely to simply try another website instead. I say this with no offence intended to the original designer of the CMSMS website, but it's not professional. It doesn't encourage me to explore further or even convey the feeling that CMSMS is a quality product.

Beyond the aesthetics of the website, the administration themes are also sub-par. OneEleven is definitely the best yet, by some way in fact, but it still doesn't compare with the quality of some of the other major platforms.

While it could certainly be argued that there needs to be more CMSMS modules and themes etc, the range available meets most of my needs and I believe this would be the case with most developers.

First impressions count, and honestly if CMSMS were to be given a professional redesign, both for the website and the CMS itself, that would go a long way to encouraging more developers to give it a try.

[applejack]

gocreative I couldn't agree more about the CMS website as it really doesn't show off CMS Made Simple in the best light and as you say first impressions count.

I don't know if it is just me but recently I have noticed a decline in activity on the forum which maybe because people don't need as much help or there are just less people using CMSMS. It would be interesting to check the statistics reports to see whether or not this is true.

Personally I don't have an issue with the backend.

[gocreative]

The OneEleven back-end theme is great, but that's the only good one I've seen. And beyond that, it's the lack of consistency with modules (terminology, placement of buttons, general functionality) that also lets CMS Made Simple down. To me, although I love CMSMS, the administration area feels very clunky and cobbled together at times.

[applejack]

Sure. I don't actually use that many 3rd party modules myself as I try and stick to just using the core as much as possible as you never know when a module may become out of date. I think the terseness at times of the documentation / module help is a bigger issue.

[uniqu3]

@gocreative
We are aware about the "old" look of the website, where if someone wants to sell something be it a service, a software or open source project it has to appeal to visitors eyes at first sight, which in our case it does not.
But problem is, we are all only volunteers and have our daily jobs or own business that we have to take care of which i think you understand has highest priority after our families.

There was "recruitment drive" not so long ago, i do not remember you or applejack applying let's say for example for Designer Team, so as you can see we all can wish something, but is everyone who "wishes" something also willing to spend his free time and give it away for peanuts to help us grow or improve?

Regarding backend and third party modules and inconsistency, we are aware of this problem to, but to make it right WHOLE backend UI would need to be rewritten from bottom up, and before that, one has to spend numerous hours planning and drawing what may work best and how one can do all planned changes without breaking too much compatibility.
And this is believe me not something small that one pair of hands can handle in his free time willing to spend for CMSMS, especially when one has to meet deadlines for release cycles, meet deadlines for client work and so on.
So yes we know backend needs proper UI guidelines and proper hooks for module devs.

@applejack
Issue with third party modules may also be within community, as there are cases within community that some features or whatever are simply being "demanded" like "hey i am customer give it to me" which as we all know simply isn't true in a open source project but not many are willing to support a third party developer in any manner be it with free time, donations or whatever else.
Just as an example we can look at ListIt2, which is documented to like 98% and i am sure there are not many modules around that can be compared in terms of Help documentation and still we receive numerous FR's or BR's for features that are already there and if you as developer dare to answer "Read Help, it's all there." you get a bitchy reply instead of "Thank you", which is i dare to say for any developer around here rather demotivating.
The bottom line is, to have a healthier developer community and third party solutions one also has to learn to support people that spend their free time giving away their code and solutions for free.

[gocreative]

There was "recruitment drive" not so long ago, i do not remember you or applejack applying let's say for example for Designer Team, so as you can see we all can wish something, but is everyone who "wishes" something also willing to spend his free time and give it away for peanuts to help us grow or improve?

Firstly, I never heard anything about this "recruitment drive", otherwise I would have put my hand up. Secondly, I've volunteered numerous times on the forum to help out with various things such as design, documentation, translations and style guidelines. No one has ever taken me up on any of those offers, even when I've been speaking directly to the development team members.

I've also given my time to help other community members on the forum wherever I can, and I've paid for my feature requests with yourself, Stikki and others, many times. I don't expect anything for free, and I'm happy to pay for things if necessary. I feel I do my part more than most.

Regarding backend and third party modules and inconsistency, we are aware of this problem to, but to make it right WHOLE backend UI would need to be rewritten from bottom up

I didn't quite mean it like that. I'm more concerned about having some basic guidelines such as which labels to use (e.g. "Apply" versus "Save and Continue Editing") and where buttons are placed. I'm sure if a very basic set of guidelines was created and distributed to developers, it would be adopted in time. I offered to create this document some time ago and Calguy (whom I was speaking to on the forum) didn't respond to my offer.

The bottom line is, to have a healthier developer community and third party solutions one also has to learn to support people that spend their free time giving away their code and solutions for free.

I personally think there needs to be an overhaul of the Forge whereby there's an integrated payment system for feature requests/bugs. For example, if your feature request is accepted as valid by the developer then you (or anyone else) can click on a Donate button which allows them to contribute an amount that the developer requests. If no payment is received then it's up to the developer to fulfill the request if they want to. This type of system, or something similar, would help make the process of donating much more straightforward, and if the payments were processed via CMSMS's PayPal account then perhaps a small commission could be taken. CMSMS and all modules remain free, but the core and module developers can receive payment for work when there's sufficient demand.

[applejack]

Goran Re: recruitment drive I did actually apply and I have posted a number of times that I am prepared to help out in redesigning the site.

I do fully appreciate that the devs have other things to do such as working to support their families I am no different so what I say about all this is not meant as a criticism in the slightest. All I am trying to do is raise the question about how to improve CMSMS and what can be done to get it appeal to a wider and growing audience from which we can all benefit.