other CMSs

[diogo]

I thought it might be good to have a place where we can post other good CMSs and transparently talk about their positive aspects and, why not, compare them to PW. This might help PW grow by learning with the others, and hopefully, could even bring those tools devs to explain them to us.

This idea came up to me after this discussion, and from realizing that after discovering PW I'm not as curious about finding other CMSs as I was before. I can Imagine that this has also happened to others here, and can never be good to stay in ignorance

I almost stopped looking for other CMSs, but there are two that I would like to share for starting:

The Secretary -> http://www.secretarycms.com/ (this is a free self hosted portfolios CMS. For a portfolios tool it's quite flexible. The user interface is also nice)

Webpop -> http://www.webpop.com/ (It's a cloud CMS that gives complete control over the markup. This one is not free)

[Adam Kiss]

I myself am a static man - I love Middleman, Jekyll, Stacey & Kirby.

I'd really love it if there was some crossover, something where you'd write your website, build it and then upload it having some tiny PHP router for doing tiny bits of runtime changes, like including different files based on $ajax, sending forms, etc.

[Mathias Biilmann]

Hi guys,

I'm one of the founders of Webpop, and the main techie behind it. So here's a tool dev happy to explain away.

If you have any questions about Webpop I'll do my best to answer them.

[Soma]

There is other CMS'???

[Nico Knoll]

@mathias: Lovely to have you here

[Joss]

I'm one of the founders of Webpop, and the main techie behind it. So here's a tool dev happy to explain away.

Mathias, you must have far too much time on your hands to track this post here!!!

But welcome anyway

(I will now run off and look at Webpop...)

[Mathias Biilmann]

Mathias, you must have far too much time on your hands to track this post here!!!

But welcome anyway

Thanks for the welcome Can't say I have a lot of time on my hands, but our real time analytics showed a new link sending traffic our way, so thought I would check it out

[Adam Kiss]

Wow, that's really going for ABC of business.

(always be closing)

[diogo]

Thanks for showing up Mathias. I'm glad my post brought you here

I must say I was very impressed with Webpop when I found it. The interface is great, and you can see the care that was put in building it. I also love that you respect freedom of markup so much.

Since you are here, have a look at ProcessWire, I can guarantee that it will impress you

@Joss, the internet is magic!

[adamspruijt]

I'm a big fan of Symphony CMS, before coming to ProcessWire this was my muse. There are still many things I greatly admire about the project, one of which is their BEAUTIFUL extensions site.

[adamspruijt]

The Secretary -> http://www.secretarycms.com/ (this is a free self hosted portfolios CMS. For a portfolios tool it's quite flexible. The user interface is also nice)

LOVING The Secretary Diogo, very cool, I will have to play with this more very soon. Lots of interesting features already. Thanks.

[Marty Walker]

@diogo Thanks for Secretary link. I do a bit of work for artists so I'll check it out.

[Wanze]

Does anyone know the CodeIgniter based "ionize cms"?

http://ionizecms.com

Some months ago I gave it a try but never used it in a project.

I was looking for a "native-multilang-friendly" cms which can handle as many languages as I need with only one site-tree. Seems like there's also a new version out this year. Demo available, link is on the homepage.

Cheers

[MatthewSchenker]

Greetings Everyone,

I was involved in Joomla for about four years before coming to ProcessWire.  I also did a fair amount of work with ModX, ExpressionEngine, Drupal, WordPress, and Concrete5.  For frameworks, I got involved with CodeIgniter, then with Laravel.

I can honestly say that -- in my experience -- ProcessWire allows the smoothest, cleanest path to the development of my concepts.  I feel that with ProcessWire there is a shorter distance between what I am imagining for a site and how to get there.

As diogo explains, that does not mean that ProcessWire has nothing to learn from other systems.  And a positive discussion like this could be amazing if ProcessWire can gain from it.

I've taken some time to look at my work with the CMSs, and I actually don't see anything ProcessWire can learn from them.

Looking at Laravel and CodeIgniter, I see some potential for comparison (but nothing too major here):

1. Validation. Using the API to build forms in ProcessWire is an effective way to add validation.  But it would be great to have more validation in the admin forms.

2. Form Creation.  Again, we can create forms using the ProcessWire API.  But when you want to build forms that lead to creating or editing new pages, I wonder if a more obvious "form helper" might be good (for example, something like CodeIgniter's: http://ellislab.com/codeigniter/user-guide/helpers/form_helper.html).

These are the only two I can come up with at the moment.  And again, in both cases, there are ways to achieve it in ProcessWire.  It's more a question of whether there might be an even easier way.

Thanks,

Matthew

[ryan]

1. Validation. Using the API to build forms in ProcessWire is an effective way to add validation.  But it would be great to have more validation in the admin forms.

All fieldtypes provide their own validation configuration options. Some have a lot of ways you can customize and configure the validation, whereas others don't. Which fields do you think would benefit from more validation options, and which validation options would you add? I regularly add more configurable validation options to fieldtypes, so always looking to spot needs here. 

2. Form Creation.  Again, we can create forms using the ProcessWire API.  But when you want to build forms that lead to creating or editing new pages, I wonder if a more obvious "form helper" might be good (for example, something like CodeIgniter's:

Can you go into more detail -- I'm not sure I understand? At least the code igniter example is confusing to me because it seems like it is just wrapper functions for general purpose form markup, and not clear on the benefits of that. But I'm also confused about the creating/editing pages part. 

[MatthewSchenker]

Hi Ryan,

Just want to make sure... I don't see these as problems, just places where -- perhaps -- incremental improvements might be possible.  In other words, I'm kind of stretching to think of where something could be improved.  Day to day, I see no weaknesses with ProcessWire.  Quite the opposite!

Let me clarify:

Validation: In the admin forms, even if data is entered in the incorrect format, or not added at all, a page is still created.  For example, if an e-mail field is entered in the wrong format, or if a text field is required but left empty, upon submit the page is still created.  Again, it is straightforward to build custom forms with the API and add any validation rules.  I understand that, with the admin forms, the emphasis is on getting pages done.  I'm just wondering if more validations could be implemented in the admin forms.

Form Creation: I think it's easy to create forms with the API that can save or edit pages, and these forms can also handle the validations described above.  I was (again) only stretching my mind to think of an area where something might be improved.  For newcomers, making forms to create and edit content is one of the first areas of concern.  It's possible that just documenting how to do this in ProcessWire would do the trick.  I know there are some good discussions about it here in the forum.

I hope this makes clear that ProcessWire is an amazing system that handles everything I can think of.  My comments are more in the vein of wondering, "Is there anything more that can or should be done?"

Thanks,

Matthew

[ryan]

Matthew, don't worry I know what you mean. You always have good ideas, so I'm just trying to make sure I understand. I'm still confused, so bear with me.  

Validation: In the admin forms, even if data is entered in the incorrect format, or not added at all, a page is still created.  For example, if an e-mail field is entered in the wrong format, or if a text field is required but left empty, upon submit the page is still created. 

When a page is created you only have two fields: "title" and "name", and of course name is populated automatically. If you don't populate the required field (title), the page won't get created. Do you mean when an existing page is saved, rather than when a page is created?

Once the page has been created, you are editing an unpublished page. If you have an email address field that is required and neglect to enter an email address, or you enter an invalid email address, it won't let you publish the page. That page isn't publishable until it validates with the rules you've set. At least, this is the way it's supposed to work (at least in 2.3 or dev branch). Let me know if you are getting different behavior?

Form Creation: I think it's easy to create forms with the API that can save or edit pages, and these forms can also handle the validations described above.  I was (again) only stretching my mind to think of an area where something might be improved.  For newcomers, making forms to create and edit content is one of the first areas of concern. 

Creating custom forms from the API and using the submissions to create/modify pages -- I'd consider this an advanced topic. In fact, the only place I've done it (that's in current use) is the site modules.processwire.com. While it's true that it's relatively easy, it's also something where security is a major factor to consider, so something I don't think newcomers should start doing right away. We've outlined how to do this many times on the forum, but think we'd benefit from a tutorial on the wiki or something -- more documentation always a good thing. Form Builder is a good alternative for this, though not as wide-open for options as doing it all yourself from the API. 

[diogo]

I'm a big fan of Symphony CMS, before coming to ProcessWire this was my muse. There are still many things I greatly admire about the project, one of which is their BEAUTIFUL extensions site.

I also came from symphony, but didn't put it on the list because with the time using pw I came to the conclusion that those things that symphony does well, pw also does, if not even better

I love their debug tool, and when I joined the forums here I tried to think of something similar for pw http://processwire.com/talk/topic/260-breadcrumbs-how-to-and-what-it-says-about-the-system/#entry1882 (end of the post). That kind of tool makes all the sense in symphony (i guess you can't develop a site without) but not in pw, and I think Nik nailed it with the selector test.

[MatthewSchenker]

Hi Ryan,

Thanks for your responses!  I was just trying to think of a good response to the idea of this discussion. But our conversation shows that there is relatively little...

It sounds like the validation points I mentioned are being covered in 2.3 (I will do more testing of 2.3 soon).  That's great!

On form creation, I definitely understand that it is a more advanced topic.  But with some of the site concepts I'm working on, there is a need to create forms for users at various access levels to create/edit content.  I'm weighing the benefits of the two main approaches:

1. Just use the admin interface, hiding anything "regular" users should not see (and perhaps re-work some CSS).

2. Build custom forms using the API to create/edit pages.

Thanks,

Matthew

[panictree]

Hey guys,

Some very nice ideas here to explore in the future. Like all of you, I'm delighted with ProcessWire and use it to build all kinds of websites. That said, it's always good to keep an open mind and be willing to learn from other systems. So, keep your suggestions coming, please.   

[ryan]

It sounds like the validation points I mentioned are being covered in 2.3 (I will do more testing of 2.3 soon).  That's great!

Okay cool, I've been on the 2.3 dev for awhile and might not be remembering if this was in 2.2.9 or not. But give it a try sometime and let me know if you find it's missing anything in that regard. 

On form creation, I definitely understand that it is a more advanced topic.  But with some of the site concepts I'm working on, there is a need to create forms for users at various access levels to create/edit content.  I'm weighing the benefits of the two main approaches:

This is one thing that ProcessWire does not do out of the box. In this regard, it starts from a security over flexibility model. It maintains a strong separation between what is public/guest and what is admin. Whereas with something like Drupal, you can blur the line quite a bit. In fact, I've actually used Drupal when I needed this quickly. But ProcessWire can certainly do it all just as well, if not better, but it'll take a good deal of code to implement it and make it secure. 

1. Just use the admin interface, hiding anything "regular" users should not see (and perhaps re-work some CSS).

The admin is for trusted users, even if they don't have access to do a lot in there. So if your users fit the definition of "trusted" then this would be a fine approach. But I would avoid anything that would make it possible for any random person to create an account and then get into your admin.

2. Build custom forms using the API to create/edit pages.

This is the approach I personally prefer, and it's the one I use for modules.processwire.com. But you do have to consider security at ever step. Make sure you limit the fields they can populate and don't let them change things like template, parent or status. I would also avoid any kind of file uploads, unless you are using a tool like FormBuilder that can quarantine them for approval. 

[MatthewSchenker]

Greetings,

Thanks again, Ryan, for your sharp responses.

Yes, certainly, I am always thinking of security.  I try as often as possible to use pre-filled search fields (dropdowns, buttons, etc) to reduce this.  By the way, one of the reasons I cited the CodeIgniter form helper earlier is because it automatically sanitizes entries, which is nice.

In business sites, with just a handful of admins, there are fewer issues with form submissions.  But in community-style sites, which represent several of my upcoming projects, there will always be a need to allow a variety of users to submit materials that eventually are published on the site.

I keep reading about how developers hate making forms.  Maybe I'm weird, but I actually like the process of designing forms, figuring out how submissions are handled, and where the submissions go.

Thanks,

Matthew

[Joss]

Okay, I admit I quite like designing forms too - getting the layout really nice and logical so the user is easily walked through the process is really satisfying.

There is an amazing amount of human psychology in a good form design!

Not that I am any good at it, mind you!

[MatthewSchenker]

Hey Joss,

So all that proves is that we are both weird.  Then again, I knew that a while back when we jointly haunted the ATAAW community.

Thanks,

Matthew

[diogo]

https://www.contentful.com/

This is still in beta and I just asked for an invitation, so I don't know how it is. But the concept sounds good.

Edit: just want to add that something like this would be really easy to do with a PW site