Hi there,
last night I stumbled upon PW, while looking for some answers about a Joomla problem. I am not familiar with Joomla at all, but I am looking for a good (or actually: a better) alternative to WebsiteBaker CMS.
As an experienced webdesigner I have been working with that system since 2005, and I'm actually one of the moderators on their forum (>2500 posts). I love that CMS for its simplicity and user friendliness, i'ts lack of a complex templating system (like PW it just uses any regular static HTML/CSS/JS as a basis), and fairly flexible options. You can create most small to medium sized websites with it easilly. However, its main downside is the absence of a custom fields option, and (lets call it) database interaction. I'm not a coder, and my coding skills are limited to tweaking and trial & error based modifications. I feel I'm limited in creating the solutions and sites I want to make for my clients, just because I'm stuck with ready to use plugins, or hiring coders to do custom PHP stuff (or relying on the forum members). Besides this, development of WB is grinding to a halt lately, due to several situations. In my opinion, it's heading towards the end. It really should be coded from the ground up again, but I don't see that happen, and it's already too late.
Because of its popularity, I have turned to Wordpress for some projects, but I think it's a very user unfriendly system unless you stick to simple blog type sites. Templating and modifying themes and functions is a nightmare, working with it is very frustrating, as it's not logical at all. I really don't understand why it's such a popular platform. So, me and WP are not a good match.
Then I tried Joomla. I have tried it many times in the past, and always got frustrated and annoyed with it. However, version 3 is much improved above previous versions, and after I found K2 with all its custom fields options, I was rather optimistic. However, it doesn't have that same simplicity of WebsiteBaker, and I'm afraid Joomla may turn out to be a mismatch as well.
But then I found out about ProcessWire, and within minutes I got really intrigued. I fee it is what a next major version of WebsiteBaker could have been. The version that will probably never come. I first tried the demo, got excited, and installed it on my server. After testing it for some hours, I have a very strong feeling this will be my new platform. It is very user friendly, very logical, very slick, and does not use some complex proprietary theming/templating system. Yet it looks very powerful and it seems limitless in possibilities with its use of custom fields and API calls, that even for a non-coder like me seem to be understandable. I need to offer my clients a structured, fool proof backend with custom fields they can enter content in. Not an editor field with dozens of shortcodes no one can understand.
I just discoved the Hanna code option. Very cool indeed, it is almost the same as the droplets option in WebsiteBaker which I use a lot, so I immediately felt at home with it. And that's a feeling I get with the CMS as a whole: I feel at home somehow. And that's a feeling I never had with Wordpress or Joomla, or any other CMS I tried (except WebsiteBaker).
Anyway, I thought I'd share my excitement with you, and I'm hopeful that PW proves to be my new CMS of coice. And if it's not, well, then I have had the pleasure of feeling excited for some time, anyway
I'm not sure if this is the right forum section, so feel free to move it to somewhere else.
Kind regards,
Jurgen
