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cmscritic

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Posts posted by cmscritic

  1. 8 hours ago, teppo said:

    @maxf5I have just removed certain remark from your earlier post as a moderation action. Also my apologies to @cmscritic – you definitely shouldn't have to see that kind of language here.

    A friendly reminder from the moderating team: please keep the tone of discussion polite. Crude or discriminative remarks and insults of any kind will absolutely not be tolerated on this forum. As a community we're committed to keeping this forum a safe and welcoming place for everyone.

    Think before you post.

    Thanks, I appreciate that.

     

    1 minute ago, tpr said:

    As a side note, I would appreciate if cmscritic would have posted an update here in the forum saying a few words on going back to WP beforehands. That would preclude having a bad taste in our mouth when founding it out from somewhere else.

    While I can understand being displeased that we are no longer powered by Processwire, I don't think it's reasonable to request that I update this community every time I make a change. It is my job to try out various systems repeatedly and our site has been powered by more than one CMS (pw and wp aside). Do take this nicely but the entire reason for CMS Critic is that we are not accountable to any one CMS and that is how we maintain our integrity. It's been amazing using PW for the period for which we have but we WILL switch it up and we ARE open to change. To name a few, I've run the site on WP, PW, Serendipity and Agility CMS.

    Also, realize that we have been sure to promote PW heavily and continue to think it's an excellent CMS, regardless of whether we run it on our site. I think realistically, we have and continue to give back in spades.

    Feel free to ask questions if you wish, I'm always willing to answer.

    • Like 5
  2. 11 hours ago, maxf5 said:

    Welcome to ******* webdevelopment 2018: Buy a theme for 59$ and change the logo and a few colors
    https://demo.tagdiv.com/newspaper/

    Yep, makes implementing websites a hell of a lot easier. If you don't like it, that's your choice. I don't appreciate your use of the term "gay" as something terrible or wrong. My brother happens to be gay and your opinion may have had value if you hadn't showed your hand and made such an ignorant reference.

    • Like 4
  3. On 4/26/2017 at 11:18 AM, AndZyk said:

    I meant no coverage since the release of version 3.

    Meanwhile Mike from @cmscritic answered on my question via the contact form with this:

    I was always under the assumption, that this website contains only articles from selected authors. It seems that I could write him an article, but I think there are more capable members in this forum to write an article. Also is english not my native language. :P

    But first, they should fix their register page which currently cannot be found. Maybe @Jonathan Lahijani can fix this?

    Regards, Andreas

    The register page is disabled deliberately. I don't want anyone registering at this time because we were inundated with spam accounts. As for the coverage of PW 3... we do our best to cover what we can but sometimes news articles don't get much traction. I prefer editorial pieces and reviews. Of course, I'm only one man so while I do have an author or two I pay, I can only do so much. I welcome anyone who wants to contribute PW content, however, and will happily link back to your website in return. Just hit me up at mike@cmscritic.com

    Thanks

    • Like 4
  4. 1 hour ago, Craig A Rodway said:

    WordPress: Grade D 65, 10.29 seconds load time, 3.5 MB page size, and 206 (!!) requests (URL)

    ProcessWire: Grade A 93, 1.73 seconds load time, 2.5 MB page size, and 70 requests (URL)

    (Using the same service and location)

    Good work :)

    Thank goodness. I almost had a heart attack when I saw a grade d. Glad to be back, so much quicker.

    • Like 2
  5. 27 minutes ago, Mike Rockett said:

    @cmscritic - That's excellent news indeed. I've noticed that requests are taking a really long time to process, however. For example, requesting an old URL (cmscritic.com/grav/) just loads forever. As does search... Any ideas what could be causing that?

    I'm of course dealing with server load issues at the moment. I'm speaking with my host now.

    • Like 1
  6. 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

    • Like 21
  7. On 08/07/2016 at 4:48 AM, Sephiroth said:

     

    :o 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. 

     

    • Like 1
  8. 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

    • Like 21
  9. For the record, this bothered me too. I get that many (most?) of your potential advertisers are CMS companies because you write about CMS', but.. if you ever write a positive review about a product that simultaneously pays you, even for something entirely unrelated, it's a bit like a politician voting "yay" on a law that benefits a large company while being connected with said company: even if it's honestly and purely innocent, it's going to send the wrong message.

    We're not the ones you need to convince about your impartiality, but that's just how it works. Making it very clear that you're only allowing these companies to advertise on your site and have absolutely no connections to them otherwise might just be the only thing you can do to "fix" this, though. The worst thing you could do would be calling them your "sponsors" (which seems quite common these days), but luckily you don't seem to do that :)

    As a bit of positive feedback, there's one thing you're doing absolutely right: so far I haven't seen a single paid or sponsored tweet on your Twitter timeline. My tolerance for paid content on Twitter is pretty close to zero -- in fact I recently unfollowed A List Apart because these days considerable amount (probably 10% or less, but still) of their tweets are spammy sponsor messages. Don't care how important they are, they're not that important.

    I understand what you are saying and appreciate the feedback. People in the industry that know me, know I am blunt and honest so I go based on my reputation rather than what the site may construe. I need to make a living and I have no problem slamming projects I think aren't doing things right whether they advertise or not (see my recent video of webydo to get an idea). They were an advertiser and they left shortly after but it certainly didn't stop me from calling their product what it was.. crap.

    Anyways, it's a fine balance that I simply have to work to maintain.

    • Like 4
  10. According to that policy, in case when things are ugly we should look the other way and don't mention about it.

    This is not the spirit of this forum and neither of processwire.

    I hope being political correct, status quo and social engineering will never creep into this forum because it rots.

    It was the way it was said that I have a problem with. Telling someone that you lost interest in their work is not necessarily a nice thing to say. I don't mind any of the other constructive comments here but I didn't appreciate that one. It also might simply be that i'm sensitive about my baby since that's what I do all day every day and hearing things like that bother me. Either way, nobody expects people to not speak or share their opinion but often it's the way it's said that can be improved upon.

    Anyways as you can see from this entire thread, I've appreciated the real feedback offering helpful suggestions so I see no reason in continuing the debate about whether it was nice or not to say.

    Mike

    Related content would also be a good idea. Let's say you have an article relating to a certain CMS etc, at the bottom you could have ad links under a "Related Reading..." section like in the following image. Those links are still referring the visitor, and you could still be getting paid, but they also don't deceive and they look like they are supposed to be there. Also, the other ads in this image look professional and actually a part of the site, and I'd actually click on them (if I needed bike parts). As Peter points out, notice how you have a slight background colour variation between the ads and the main content etc.

    bike-cpa-ads.png

    Some good suggestions, thank you

  11. I don't think it's bias. Actually, knowing cmscritic I'm sure it's not. I'm not even saying that it's incorrect, just analysing what new visitors might feel.

    Thats fair. Thanks

  12. Not subtitles, subsites.

    Your adds are almost all about CMSs. I don't know how that works, if it's the adds provider that choses them based on the content of the website —I'm even assuming that everyone sees something different, since one of them is a Portuguese supermarket—, or if you chose them yourself directly from the announcers. But in my opinion,  and in an ideal world, a website that reviews CMSs would gain in prestige by not being payed to publicise CMS products.

    EDIT: not trying to make your life tougher. Just in brainstorming mode, as I said before :)

    They are CMS companies advertising on the site. They are static ads. Its not realistic to assume that i'm biased because someone advertises with us. The same could be said about any other company with ads on their site. It has nothing to do with bias. However, I'll look into ways to improve things.

    Thanks

  13. I use Chrome with AdBlock extension so I haven't notice any ads on the CMSCritic website.

    Here is the screen capture.

    attachicon.gifThe Winner of the 2014 People s Choice CMS Award for Best Open Source PHP CMS.png

    I used "Awesome Screenshot" extension which automatically scroll to take screenshot on the entire page of the website.

    I disable AdBlock to see how its looks like and I realized what "Soma" was saying. I am not promoting anything here so do not take any anything from this post.

    @Mike: If you look at my screenshot and see just below "Related Products" area. You will not see any "Got Questions" banner there, do you? I have ads block enabled. You must have something to that "Got Questions" widget that treat as Ads. I am telling this so that whoever has block ads they still can see forum banner!

    Only concerns is topic titles are bigger than the your website logo's font! Other than that your website Wikipedia of CMSs!

    Good feedback, thank you. I will look into it.

    • Like 1
  14. One more important thing about the adds. I don't know if you have any control about it, but would be nice if they weren't announcing CMSs. It doesn't favour the feeling of impartiality that people should have when visiting the site.

    You lost me on this one, can you explain?

  15. Not so much feedback on the site structure, but you should now that your banner link to "Website Builders Critic" tries to open in a popup and gets blocked by Chrome.

    Also, there is a broken image on that Joomla page:

    attachicon.gifScreen Shot 2014-10-31 at 8.46.32 AM.png

    Fixed, thank you.

    Mike, definitely the inline ads. They are everywhere now, I know. But I even switched my daily online newspaper because of them...

    If I look at the website now, what bothers me more is the dispersion of information. The "Check out our new site, Website Builders Critic!" on the top, plus the magnolia add under it, and then all the right column. Not sure if you would loose to much by dropping some, but I imagine that having less adds will get more clicks for those few individually, no? EDIT: oh, and on the left also, under the menu...

    There's also some dispersion of content with the subsites. Not sure how you could solve it, but I find it particularly confusing.

    The tweets, ya... I would say less repeated, I having constantly the feeling of repeated info. They don't have to be more personal, I don't think so. How about having a tweet for each event, and some time later a resume tweet? Something more telegraphic with the links to all events... well, I'm in brainstorming mode now.

    Hellobar being distracting, I can understand that. I can break up the ads more with content / rotate them perhaps. I'll work on that. I'm not sure I follow you with the subtitles? Can you explain further? No problem on tweets.

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