28 replies to this topic

[everfreecreative]

OH. MY. GOD.

Tell me I'm not dreaming!

I've been scouring the Internet for weeks looking for a CMS that would allow me to give my clients a decent user experience.

I've developed sites in Joomla, Drupal, Silverstripe, and Wordpress. Joomla was a nightmare of epic proportions. The admin interface is confusing and inconsistent. Drupal had promise in theory, but trying to customize it just caused it to bug out. Silverstripe is nice, but the admin panel is slow and clunky. Wordpress is great for blogs, but feels like you're hacking it if you're trying to use it for more than that.

After my frustrations with the big name CMSs, I decided to try and get a better lay of the land and see what else was out there. Every one of them was either lacking a crucial feature, poor on the usability front, or a buggy mess.

I have some programming knowledge, but mainly I am a designer looking for a CMS that lets me design the client's experience in the same way that I'm able to design the end user's experience. I don't need templates or templating languages. I want something that lets me be the designer and then gives my clients the power to work with what I've developed.

As someone deeply concerned about user experience, I don't understand it. How could so many developers get this so wrong? Were they just throwing these things together without thinking about the use cases? The need for flexibility? What people actually NEED in a CMS? I was beginning to think I'd have to become a PHP developer and build something from scratch.

So far, what I see in ProcessWire is almost exactly the ideal CMS I have been piecing together in my mind's eye. The consistency in the mental design model, the absolutely crucial ability to create your own page types and custom fields for your clients which is utterly lacking or nonexistant in nearly every major CMS, the ability for logged in users to easily update a page they're on by simply hitting an "edit" link from the front end...

Elegant, logical, and flexible. It's obvious that you've put a lot of thought into this. Thank you.

I can't wait to get started.

[slkwrm]

Welcome, Everfreecreavtive.
I have to say, my thoughts were very similar to yours when I found this great CMS (and great community). I was very frustrated in my quest of simplicity in CMS scripts. When I found it I was amazed how simple yet powerful it is. Actually, I still can't fully believe that this CMS is a brainchild of one man It's too good to exist, but you're not dreaming.

Just remembered (using google ) a good quote of Einstein on the topic:
Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction.

[everfreecreative]

I'm going through the documentation and I just keep on thinking "yes! yes! YES!"

[Pete]

That'll keep happening a lot throughout your experience I'm sure.

I kept looking for more complicated ways to accomplish things in ProcessWire when it turns out that the majority of the time there's a really simple solution.

Of course it helps if you know a bit of PHP for the templating side of things, but I'd go so far as to say that the small bit you will need for most projects is easily learned from the default templates.

[everfreecreative]

Thanks for the welcome, guys. I'm pretty solid with the basics of php, so Processwire is good for me in that regard. I've never understood the point of having a separate templating language. It's not much easier for people who don't know php and it just makes it harder for those who do to understand how the app is working behind the scenes. I can't imagine it helps with site performance, either.

[ryan]

Welcome everfreecreative--Thanks for your great feedback. But you guys are way too kind. Still, I was having a bad day yesterday (got stuck attempting to fix a client's server issue all day) and these posts turned it around for me--ended the weekend on a positive note--thanks for this! I appreciate the enthusiasm and it is contagious--makes me want to work on PW all day.

[Soma]

No, you're not dreaming, but it's like a dream!

[everfreecreative]

Welcome everfreecreative--Thanks for your great feedback.

Hey Ryan, thanks for the welcome. And thank you for all the work you've put and continue to put into this wonderful application!

I appreciate the enthusiasm and it is contagious--makes me want to work on PW all day.

Whatever I can do to help!

[raydale]

Hi Everfreecreative,

I remember having a similar reaction to you when I discovered PW. I have been thoroughly battle testing it on two projects recently and that eureka feeling still hasn't worn off yet. PW is just a dream to work with - especially for designers who like to write their own semantic HTML and not have a CMS generate for you (badly).

The new repeating fields and field contexts being worked on are going to be a huge help in delivering a usable admin environment to clients.

[everfreecreative]

I have been thoroughly battle testing it on two projects recently and that eureka feeling still hasn't worn off yet. PW is just a dream to work with - especially for designers who like to write their own semantic HTML and not have a CMS generate for you (badly).

Happy to hear the love is more than surface deep! I'm extremely happy with it so far.

[leroj]

Hi Everfreecreative, and welcome! I had the same reaction when discovered PW , after testing a dozen of CMS-es

[DaveP]

PW reminds me of brunch, as described by Jacques in The Simpsons - "It’s not quite breakfast, it’s not quite lunch, but it comes with a slice of cantaloupe at the end."

For breakfast, read frameworks like CodeIgniter or CakePHP and for lunch read CMSs like Joomla or Drupal. And the slice of cantaloupe is the "OH. MY. GOD." moments that just keep happening.

[nikola]

I totally agree, PW is mind blowing. I've used WordPress and SilverStripe before and they were a mess.

I like the simplicity that PW offers to designers - I can design a site in Photoshop, make a pure XHTML/CSS templates, think little about API functions and voila, a site is born.

I haven't used full PW potential yet, but so far every site I've made came out exactly as I planned.

So thanks again, Ryan

[Sevarf2]

Welcome in the PW world...

[zach]

+1 everfreecreative

While developing my own site using other CMS's the basic functionality I desired was either too complicated to engineer or too inflexible in design, but then I found PW.

I still have a ways to go before my official site launch, but I doubt I will hit any major road blocks that will force me to look for something different.

[Bill]

I'm going through the documentation and I just keep on thinking "yes! yes! YES!"

LMBO!

I agree tho .

I'm feeling pretty stupid... i set aside 2 hours this afternoon to finally poke around... 5 minutes later, i'm not sure what to do, cuz I already understand what I thought would take me - well, ... the 2 hours lol.

Bill

[Pete]

I'm feeling pretty stupid... i set aside 2 hours this afternoon to finally poke around... 5 minutes later, i'm not sure what to do, cuz I already understand what I thought would take me - well, ... the 2 hours lol.

I love it when that happens - happened to me with something the other day (although it was half an hour to do something I thought would take half a day - same principle). It certainly starts to make up for those frustrating times when running into coding roadblocks - those tedious ones where the answer turns out to be easy, but only after lots of time and swearing - I much prefer it when it happens this way around

[statestreet]

Oh, man. I'm having to go back to WordPress for this project that's on a tight timeframe, and every single thing I do, whether it's trying to find an appropriate plugin, or hacking the ThemeForest theme to get something to work, I keep thinking of how I'd just do it the right way in ProcessWire. Sooo painful. I can't wait until I get to use PW again!

[everfreecreative]

Oh, man. I'm having to go back to WordPress for this project that's on a tight timeframe, and every single thing I do, whether it's trying to find an appropriate plugin, or hacking the ThemeForest theme to get something to work, I keep thinking of how I'd just do it the right way in ProcessWire. Sooo painful. I can't wait until I get to use PW again!

I know, right? I've had to go back and work on Joomla sites and it's just such a chore to do anything, even simple updates. Processwire is clean and logical, and just a joy to work with.

[DaveP]

Absolutely the same here.

Wordpress is such a pain. It's like Russian Roulette installing plugins - will it work, won't it, will it break something else?

And the other extreme is something like CodeIgniter, which I do like, but is so long-winded. I found myself editing a CI view file yesterday and just wanted to add the page url for some reason, so I typed

<?php echo $page->url; ?>

and I was quite surprised when the bloody gormless page didn't even know its own url!

You do get used to the luxury of PW. And it scales too.



That's a screen shot of an intranet project I'm working on. Now I just need to decide whether or not to import the whole UK postcode file ('postcodes' in the screen shot is just the outer part like NW1) - I have the whole list right down to, say NW1 1AB and including their grid references, just the 1,692,241 rows!