CMS Critic now powered by ProcessWire

[cmscritic]

I've tried different browsers and I'm still getting this:

cmscritic.png

Any ideas?

Ahh I see. Those pages were indeed causing errors and I disabled comments on them. Long story but it's resolved now. Thank you for flagging.

[NooseLadder]

Thanks, I have just submitted my vote.

[ryan]

The case study that was in this thread (and following posts) have been moved to: http://processwire.com/talk/topic/3987-cmscritic-development-case-study/

[arjen]

Hi, 

I was just browsing cmscritic.com and noticed that it felt quite slow. Looking at the source it seems that they moved back to WordPress? Does anyone know what motivated this move? 

[GuruMeditation]

This is taken from their website....

Quote

Hey there, although we loved using Processwire, we felt that WordPress was better suited to help us connect with the community more, and also to help take our directories to the next level, so to speak.  And of course, there's no denying that WordPress is pretty much designed to power websites that publish content frequently, like we do.

Quote

While PW is certainly a powerful system, we wanted to implement some more cool features that are simply much easier with WordPress. Things that would typically cost development dollars if we wanted to put in place with PW. As such, we're now able to offer a more customizable and unique experience on the site.

https://www.cmscritic.com/extreme-makeover-cms-critic-edition/

[arjen]

Thanks GuruMeditation, couldn't find the right topic. Seems understandable where they are coming from. WordPress does have some choice of prefabricated community plug-ins. If you aren't a developer or if there is no business case for custom development the choice is obvious.

Hopefully they won't get hacked 

[Robin S]

It's not unusual to hear of a website moving from WP to PW but this is the first time I've heard of one going the other way.

Quote

Things that would typically cost development dollars if we wanted to put in place with PW.

Call me crazy, but I thought a business that wants us to believe they are qualified to pass judgement on the software used to develop websites might be capable of doing their own website development and customisation in-house.

[Craig]

Wow, the new Pingdom Website Speed Test result is... amazing

Grade D, 10.29 seconds load time, 3.5 MB page size, and 206 (!!) requests.

[clsource]

I think they should have hire a in house developer.

Its very important in any business to have the right people, 
sure wordpress its fine for publishing content but that should not
be the main reason for ditching out processwire.

At least they helped Processwire grow, 
Hanna Code was made for their use case
of migrating a wp site to pw.

 

[qtguru]

Explains why the directory functionality that used to be there is now missing, i kinda noticed it, stopped visiting the site because now it's had to filter CMS by platform

[clsource]

I think

https://processwire.com/about/sites/list/cms-critic/

should be removed from the list of pw sites :C

[Peter Knight]

Wow - I was surprised to read this and even thought it was a joke. 

I'm sorry to see CMS Critic go. They did a lot for ProcessWire in that short space of time. Then again, ProcessWire does a lot for ProcessWire too 

I'm sure both parties will survive their CMS Brexit!

Regardless of the CMS which powers CMS Critic, I must admit I almost never visit the site. IMHO they primarily have a design and information architecture problem and not a CMS problem.

Ok, they're running on WP now so they have a CMS problem once again but you know what I mean ... 

[cmscritic]

On 7/4/2016 at 6:28 AM, arjen said:

Hi, 

I was just browsing cmscritic.com and noticed that it felt quite slow. Looking at the source it seems that they moved back to WordPress? Does anyone know what motivated this move? 

I thought I'd chime in and answer some questions first and foremost as I saw people chatting about this here. We initially moved because we wanted to add some functionality that would have cost too much to develop. My biggest issue myself is that I am not a developer (i'm a tinkerer) and I wanted more advanced product pages, etc. Yes, they could for sure have been built in processwire but I felt that for someone like myself who is not a code guy, I was too limited by the product as I simply don't have the time to learn enough PHP to code and hiring a developer to do work i could theoretically do myself with wordpress seemed like a waste of money. 

So those were the initial motivations for moving. Now that we've moved, however, the whole "grass is greener" effect has faded and I have some regrets, however, the extra functionality has allowed us to make more sales and bring on new customers that we didn't have before. So it's a catch 22 for me. I'll expand more on this further down.

On 7/4/2016 at 4:06 PM, Robin S said:

It's not unusual to hear of a website moving from WP to PW but this is the first time I've heard of one going the other way.

Call me crazy, but I thought a business that wants us to believe they are qualified to pass judgement on the software used to develop websites might be capable of doing their own website development and customisation in-house.

I don't think this is a fair statement, frankly. The initial point of our website was to view things from an end users point of view, not that of a seasoned developer. Our reviews don't go into how easy it is to code with something but rather how easy it is to use, how functional, etc. These are the things most of our readers want to know as we tend to get a lot of traffic from those who are looking for software but don't have a development background.

On 7/4/2016 at 6:43 PM, Craig A Rodway said:

Wow, the new Pingdom Website Speed Test result is... amazing

Grade D, 10.29 seconds load time, 3.5 MB page size, and 206 (!!) requests.

Yes, this grade sucks. Part of the issue for me is again, I'm not a developer so we clearly need to work on things.

On 7/5/2016 at 2:02 AM, Sephiroth said:

Explains why the directory functionality that used to be there is now missing, i kinda noticed it, stopped visiting the site because now it's had to filter CMS by platform

This is good to know, please do tell me what specifically you feel is missing so we can fix it.

On 7/6/2016 at 4:25 AM, Peter Knight said:

Wow - I was surprised to read this and even thought it was a joke. 

I'm sorry to see CMS Critic go. They did a lot for ProcessWire in that short space of time. Then again, ProcessWire does a lot for ProcessWire too 

I'm sure both parties will survive their CMS Brexit!

Regardless of the CMS which powers CMS Critic, I must admit I almost never visit the site. IMHO they primarily have a design and information architecture problem and not a CMS problem.

Ok, they're running on WP now so they have a CMS problem once again but you know what I mean ... 

ProcessWire is an awesome product and Ryan did a ton for us. Ideally, I would have loved to have simply paid him to make everything we have now work on PW. If that was a possibility and the cost wasn't too high, I would have gone that route. Sadly, it just isn't feasible sometimes and I often look for alternative ways to compensate those who work for us. 

Before our move to WP, the intent was to search out vendors who were willing to take on the task of building our site on their platform in exchange for an agreed upon advertising term. In other words, they build our site on their platform (which is a bonus as then their product gets noticed more, as was the case for processwire) and in exchange, we offer advertising for an agreed upon term as the form of payment. With the case of PW, however, this didn't work and we needed to pay for the development costs up front which, while worth it since Ryan is so awesome.. tend to get costly when every tweak needs a developer.

If I'm able to find someone with a development house who wants on the advertising in exchange for work method, I may be able to pull off a move back to PW but until then, I may have to search out other alternatives. Fortunately, there are plenty of companies that are interested in doing this but I'm picky so moving is a decision that I need to consider deeply.

Normally I wouldn't share these kinds of details to this extent but I feel I owe this community, which we've been part of for a long time, an explanation. So here's the pitch: If there's anyone out there who wants to take on the task of making what we need a reality and getting long term advertising for their business in exchange, drop me a line. Until then, the search for an alternative may continue as WP simply seems to be causing too many issues and bloat (I should have seen this coming granted but hey, nobody's perfect and a critic isn't always right).

Thanks for reading

Mike

[qtguru]

1 hour ago, cmscritic said:

I thought I'd chime in and answer some questions first and foremost as I saw people chatting about this here. We initially moved because we wanted to add some functionality that would have cost too much to develop. My biggest issue myself is that I am not a developer (i'm a tinkerer) and I wanted more advanced product pages, etc. Yes, they could for sure have been built in processwire but I felt that for someone like myself who is not a code guy, I was too limited by the product as I simply don't have the time to learn enough PHP to code and hiring a developer to do work i could theoretically do myself with wordpress seemed like a waste of money. 

So those were the initial motivations for moving. Now that we've moved, however, the whole "grass is greener" effect has faded and I have some regrets, however, the extra functionality has allowed us to make more sales and bring on new customers that we didn't have before. So it's a catch 22 for me. I'll expand more on this further down.

I don't think this is a fair statement, frankly. The initial point of our website was to view things from an end users point of view, not that of a seasoned developer. Our reviews don't go into how easy it is to code with something but rather how easy it is to use, how functional, etc. These are the things most of our readers want to know as we tend to get a lot of traffic from those who are looking for software but don't have a development background.

Yes, this grade sucks. Part of the issue for me is again, I'm not a developer so we clearly need to work on things.

This is good to know, please do tell me what specifically you feel is missing so we can fix it.

ProcessWire is an awesome product and Ryan did a ton for us. Ideally, I would have loved to have simply paid him to make everything we have now work on PW. If that was a possibility and the cost wasn't too high, I would have gone that route. Sadly, it just isn't feasible sometimes and I often look for alternative ways to compensate those who work for us. 

Before our move to WP, the intent was to search out vendors who were willing to take on the task of building our site on their platform in exchange for an agreed upon advertising term. In other words, they build our site on their platform (which is a bonus as then their product gets noticed more, as was the case for processwire) and in exchange, we offer advertising for an agreed upon term as the form of payment. With the case of PW, however, this didn't work and we needed to pay for the development costs up front which, while worth it since Ryan is so awesome.. tend to get costly when every tweak needs a developer.

If I'm able to find someone with a development house who wants on the advertising in exchange for work method, I may be able to pull off a move back to PW but until then, I may have to search out other alternatives. Fortunately, there are plenty of companies that are interested in doing this but I'm picky so moving is a decision that I need to consider deeply.

Normally I wouldn't share these kinds of details to this extent but I feel I owe this community, which we've been part of for a long time, an explanation. So here's the pitch: If there's anyone out there who wants to take on the task of making what we need a reality and getting long term advertising for their business in exchange, drop me a line. Until then, the search for an alternative may continue as WP simply seems to be causing too many issues and bloat (I should have seen this coming granted but hey, nobody's perfect and a critic isn't always right).

Thanks for reading

Mike

Hi Mike thanks most times i come to cms critic so i can know what cms exists for different platform e.g CMS for .NET or CMS for Python you guys had that feature and it was awesome but now it's missing and it makes it harder for me to explore other CMS out there. If you can bring it back i'd be extremely happy, because it was very easy and convenient with your site. 

[kongondo]

@cmscritic

Hey Mike,

The fact that you can drop in and share with us so much about your reasons for the move says a lot about you. I like that; I respect that.  As others have said, we've also gained a lot as a community from your collaboration with Ryan: Hanna Code, the awesome CMS Critic development write-up, and who knows how many people have found ProcessWire because of your site . So, thanks for the ride...

 

Best wishes for the future.

 

[LostKobrakai]

Thanks Mike for that honest and transparent answer to the discussion. Being low on budget will always force projects to make trade-offs even if one would like to not make them. And as you've experienced it: Not everything that looks shiny in the first place will ultimately be as simple, which is also a valuable insight for anyone here needing to tell that to customers.

[arjen]

3 hours ago, cmscritic said:

Normally I wouldn't share these kinds of details to this extent but I feel I owe this community, which we've been part of for a long time, an explanation.

Thanks for your honest reply Mike.

[cmscritic]

A quick update folks. A member of the forums has reached out and offered their services so perhaps you'll see our return to ProcessWire after all. We shall see. 

[qtguru]

 

15 hours ago, cmscritic said:

A quick update folks. A member of the forums has reached out and offered their services so perhaps you'll see our return to ProcessWire after all. We shall see. 

If this is true i am very much impressed with the community (my brothers/sisters), please @cmscritic let us know how we can chime in too. 

 

[Tom.]

On 7/7/2016 at 8:34 PM, cmscritic said:

A quick update folks. A member of the forums has reached out and offered their services so perhaps you'll see our return to ProcessWire after all. We shall see. 

Hello, I would also like to donate my services to help get you back on track. I've seen my fair share of WordPress sites hacked. We don't want that to CMSCritic. Front-end developer, so I do a lot of front-end facing functionality and UI/UX. 

If someone would like to create a private bitbucket team for this, maybe it can be open to the community.

[netcarver]

@cmscritic Mike, great to hear from you. I'd be very interested to know a little more about the holes in the PW offerings that compelled you to look at WP; there obviously are some, or you wouldn't have made the call to switch.

I've never personally used WP, but I know people that like the theme-ability (is that a word?) and the large number of extensions that are available for it. It's also very popular with a large section of online entrepreneurs.

I don't think we should get too emotional about folks' decisions to switch, as there are obviously a wide choice of tools around, but I would like to understand what is missing from the PW eco-system - and where possible, without detracting from Ryan's design decisions for PW - plug the gaps through well designed modules and site profiles.

Thanks for all you've done in promoting PW and hope we can get you back to using it soon.

[teppo]

59 minutes ago, netcarver said:

I don't think we should get too emotional about folks' decisions to switch, as there are obviously a wide choice of tools around, [...]

Absolutely true. Rest of this sentence was great too, but just wanted to point out that I fully agree with this: if someone prefers platform Y over PW in a specific case, that's their call to make. They may or may not have good reasoning behind that decision, but that doesn't change the fact that it's still theirs to make.

59 minutes ago, netcarver said:

I've never personally used WP, but I know people that like the theme-ability (is that a word?) and the large number of extensions that are available for it. It's also very popular with a large section of online entrepreneurs.

Someone I used to work with once explained to me that "WP is awesome because I don't have to know anything about web development to add new features to my site". For most users, even those who describe themselves as "developers", that's really the gist of it: being able to add features in a cost-effective way and without having to understand what's really going on behind the scenes.

While this approach no doubt has it's benefits, sometimes the result is this: "Grade D, 10.29 seconds load time, 3.5 MB page size, and 206 (!!) requests." Or worse, a hacked site because one or more of those plugins you installed were badly written and you didn't have the time, money or knowledge needed to spot those issues, or perhaps you neglected to monitor the site and install all those updates in time.

I'm not saying that WP can't be used to develop sites "the proper way", or that you actually have to keep installing stuff until your site breaks, but it's good to realise that what is often considered the biggest benefit of the system (ability to add features with no so-called programming knowledge) is also one of the easiest ways to completely wreck it. Each and every feature you add to the site increases the amount of technical debt, that's just how it works.

[cmscritic]

On 08/07/2016 at 4:48 AM, Sephiroth said:

 

If this is true i am very much impressed with the community (my brothers/sisters), please @cmscritic let us know how we can chime in too. 

 

Thanks for the offer. The individual in question may be offering full development of what we need in exchange for advertising / promotional services. I'll let you know if we need additional help and truly appreciate the offer.

2 hours ago, Tom. said:

Hello, I would also like to donate my services to help get you back on track. I've seen my fair share of WordPress sites hacked. We don't want that to CMSCritic. Front-end developer, so I do a lot of front-end facing functionality and UI/UX. 

If someone would like to create a private bitbucket team for this, maybe it can be open to the community.

Thank you, I think we should be ok at the moment but I'll advise if we need additional help. Gotta love this community!

1 hour ago, netcarver said:

@cmscritic Mike, great to hear from you. I'd be very interested to know a little more about the holes in the PW offerings that compelled you to look at WP; there obviously are some, or you wouldn't have made the call to switch.

I've never personally used WP, but I know people that like the theme-ability (is that a word?) and the large number of extensions that are available for it. It's also very popular with a large section of online entrepreneurs.

I don't think we should get too emotional about folks' decisions to switch, as there are obviously a wide choice of tools around, but I would like to understand what is missing from the PW eco-system - and where possible, without detracting from Ryan's design decisions for PW - plug the gaps through well designed modules and site profiles.

Thanks for all you've done in promoting PW and hope we can get you back to using it soon.

I'm in need of more coffee before I go full on with my reply but one of the big ones was the lack of a media library to reuse media content (I'm aware now that there are some solutions to this so we'll see how this plays out if the new site gets developed back on PW). Obviously, this is frustrating because we're stuck re-uploading images as opposed to reusing old ones. I know there are some solutions out there but IMHO it should be part of the core solution as opposed to something requiring a plugin. 

 

[teppo]

18 minutes ago, cmscritic said:

 I know there are some solutions out there but IMHO it should be part of the core solution as opposed to something requiring a plugin. 

To be completely fair, it is a part of the core and it doesn't require a module 

The easiest way to handle this is to create a page to contain images (or multiple pages, separated into categories, or whatever) and then, when embedding an image, choose to use an image from one of these pages instead of the current one. That's just about it. The modules that handle something like this are largely just layers of abstraction built to hide the underlying concept from the end user.

Sure, if your needs are massive then you might require a more complex solution to solve them, but something as simple as reusable images are very easy to set up using nothing but the tools that ProcessWire already ships with

[cmscritic]

I'm happy to announce that we are back on Processwire this morning. @Jonathan Lahijani contacted me based on this post and took on the daunting task of redeveloping / designing our site and has done an amazing job. I'm very pleased with the results. We have a few tweaks to do here and there but functionally, it's more than I was hoping for. 

Jonathan will be doing a full write up on the process here within the next couple of weeks but for now I just wanted to let everyone know and get some feedback on the new site. Also, HUGE thanks to @Jonathan Lahijani for doing such an amazing job. 

~Mike