Evaluating Concretecms as alternative

Community Talk
1

Hi

I come from another CMS (thatone with W) and I am not a dev. Before I embark on the ConcreteCms adventure, I have a few questions.
a. In your opinion, how suitable is ConcreteCMS for a large blog?
b. ConcreteCms has a built-in caching, how do you rate the PageSpeed via Lighthouse or others?
c. How do you see the possibilities of data exchange via REST API or webhooks on Zapier or Make.

Thank you very much for your help.

2

I am a long-time concrete-User, non-affiliated with the Core team, so mind my bias.

  1. Yes, you can build all kind of size sites with concreteCMS, only thing you need to be aware of is the use of the ā€œautonav-blockā€ which will look for a child and deep-nested pages if not configured correctly. But for a Blog page, you would probably not have deep nesting at all and preferably use the page-list block, so it should not be a problem.
  2. I usually work to achieve 100% on Pagespeed, which is pretty easy with concreteCMS. It has a built-in image Optimizer that produces fixed-size thumbnails of images for various reasons to reduce load times, with a full page cache activated, the site load should be less than ~1 second if you donā€™t have huge assets (huge images, videos ecc).
  3. I have done some REST API things the past (Version 8.xx) and It was a bit fiddly to get the connection working (Postman for the rescue) but in the end, everything was fine. Be aware that documentation is not always complete for the latest version, as there has been a move to version 9 recently. What really helps is looking into the code of big Packages that are publicly on Github like Community Store - you will learn a lot from it.

Me personally, I prefer concreteCMS for most of projects because it does most of what a CMS needs without any plugin dependencies.
A plugin for SMTP connection?
A plugin for displaying a table somewhere?
Hell no, I donā€™t want to break my site through a dependency for such a minor function.

Set up a play Installation and experiment with it, the ā€œBlog Functionā€ is already there if you install with example content.

All the best!

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3

I share that thought about a plugin for SMTP configuration on Wordpress.

When I discovered in Wordpress that it didnā€™t have a built in configuration page to change the default emailing config I was quite shocked! Something like that feels like a very ā€˜coreā€™ feature, and I too like how Concrete has much of these essential options immediately available.

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4

Thank you both @Cahueya and @mesuva for your comments. That helps me a lot. Yes, I will try ConcreteCMS, although it wasnā€™t even on my radar.

I also donā€™t quite get along with the plugineria other solutions, because their inconsistencies with each other have caused many problems. One update and the site is gone. Without a doubt, I am willing to pay for an add-on if it helps the customerā€™s needs and me.

May I ask, have you built on existing themes or created your own? Is there anything to consider in the long term?

5

I use to build on the Atomik Theme / Bedrock Framework that ships with the basic install. This is not for total beginners, you need CSS/SCSS and a bit of understanding of how templating in ConcreteCMS works.

If youā€™re not experienced in coding, it might be more economic to look for a theme that you like. Only if there is nothing that you can work with look for other options.

I donā€™t know much about the theme/add-on Landscape at the moment, because I customize what I need myself, so I cannot recommend a specific one.

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6

I mainly build out completely custom themes based on bedrock. I design the then chop up the html and template up the theme.

Its very easy to do and i can get a theme working within a few hours once i have my html.

It can take a little bit of learning but if you know php ots pretty easy to work it all out.

I have on occasion bought premade themes from the market place and used them for quick build outs. I just customise the bits i dont like or add to them.

All in all its very easy.

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7

Thank you very much @Cahueya and @TMDesigns for your clarifying words. For me as a non dev concerning theme I would first go with a premade themes and then deep dive work into Bedrock.

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If you donā€™t know how to set up a development environment with npm, then you better stick with a prebuilt theme. Bedrock is not trivial.
That would be easier.

9

Thats the way I go;-) Thanks @cobyR

10

I would be happy to take you through it? If you want a 1hr call

Using PHPstorm, bedrock really isnā€™t that bad.

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11

@TMDesigns Thatā€™s very kind of you and Iā€™ll be happy to get in touch with you when it becomes relevant. Over the next few weeks Iā€™ll be working my way through the basics (and a bit more) and a theme;-)

12

Try this link and walks you through the whole setup

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13

Great, thank you very much.

14

Iā€™ve built several large blogs on Concrete and itā€™s the best decision I made in their development. Thereā€™s a huge amount of flexibility from a content structure perspective, and with some basic development skills (or outsourcing it), you can really make Concrete jump through hoops.

One of my blogs is featured in this case study, you can see whatā€™s possible:

For page speed optisation, I use LightSpeed web server with LiteSpeed Cache. Combined that with the full-page caching in Concrete and Cloudflare as a CDN, and pages are loading lightning fast.

Hope this helps!

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15

Looks great! Itā€™s always nice to see projects on a high quality level!

16

Many thanks @jb1 for linking me to your page.

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17

many thanks for your input, Iā€™ve already started :smiley: