Processwire v. Perch

[epreston]

I need a CMS that can be integrated with an existing web site which happens to be a nonprofit and supported by a small and enthusiastic group of people. We do not either want or need to rebuild the site, what would be *ideal* is if we could install a simple cms that, besides creating whole pages and other content, can also edit existing content by simply logging in, opening the "file" (or whatever you want to call the hunk of content you want to change), making the changes, and, wala, that's it, you're done.

So, the simple question is... is this something that can be done using Processwire w/o difficulty? If so, that would be GREAT since, although Perch would be fine for the task described above, that's *all* it does, and I anticipate possibly needing some of the additional power of Processwire, so that if anyone says, that's nice, now can we do this meaning something beyond what Perch can do but Processwire can easily do.

Thanks very much,

Ed

[Pete]

Welcome to the forums

ProcessWire, like most CMS', can only edit pages in its own database so I don't think you'll find many systems that allow you to edit your own static pages that haven't been created with a CMS well as add new ones that have been created with a CMS - that's just not the way they usually work.

That said, if you can share a link to your site it really is much easier to import a currently existing site into ProcessWire than with other systems so we can certainly help you there. Depending on the complexity and size of the current site it really can be a quick process.

[yellowled]

I have actually implemented two projects with Perch before switching to ProcessWire.

It is probably not as easy to add PW to a site which exists as a static HTML prototype as it is with Perch. That is something Perch does exceptionally well. Here comes the “but”: as long as the site you're maintaining with it stays really small and not too complicated, it is perfectly fine for it. If the site grows and gets more complex (and most sites tend to do that over time), the effort you have to put into it with Perch grows as well, although I have to stress that this is my personal impression.

I really don't mean to talk down or belittle Perch. If you and your users like it and it fits your needs, it is probably the right choice. But if this is a site which is likely to grow more complex, it might be easier to go with a CMS which (again: just in my opinion) can handle bigger sites better.

[epreston]

Thanks for both helpful replies!

My site is Technologyexchangelab.org, a nonprofit site that collects technology that's particularly useful in mitigating problems of poverty and sustainability around the world. It's a custom-made (not by me) site built on MySQL, PHP5 and jQuery, The heart of it is a growing database of useful technical solutions, categorized in ways that make it easily searchable. We also host a growing number of articles, and lists of other resources. We would like to implement a CMS to better manage these things, although we are not looking at replacing the solutions database at this time.

If we could somehow 'embed' processwire into our existing site and use it to manage our articles and lists of resources, that would be a major improvement.

I looked into using Drupal, Joomla and Concrete5, but was incredibly put off by the complexity, intricacy, eccentricity and steep learning curves of Drupal and Joomla, and the dreadful slowness of some rather small sites (smaller than our own) using Concrete5. I was particularly put off by how much you have to "just know" about how each one goes about things, ie, that if you add or change something here you must also make a change there, or it simply won't work right. I spent one long night trying to create a simple article entry process in Drupal, basically enter or paste text and upload a picture, and it just plain wouldn't work right no matter what I did, and if it had worked right, what other things would I have to suffer through just to get it to post these articles to our web site as embedded content w/o having to port the whole dang site into Drupal (or Joomla)... yuck.

The point on Perch is well taken. If we got it doing exactly what we wanted, who's to say that sometime in the near future a request to extend functionality might leave us trying to get Perch to do something it wasn't designed for. So, if I knew that we'd never need more than Perch, that's what we'd use, but since we don't know that, I think processwire looks like the better and most easily implemented solution for us.

Thanks again,.

Ed

[Pete]

The issue is that these two statements are not compatible:

We would like to implement a CMS to better manage these things, although we are not looking at replacing the solutions database at this time.

If we could somehow 'embed' processwire into our existing site and use it to manage our articles and lists of resources, that would be a major improvement.

From what I can tell, almost every page on your current site has information stored in the database so there is no simple "file" to edit to change content - that's the main roadblock for you in terms of finding a simple solution. I honestly think you'll have to move the content across to any system you look at, be it ProcessWire, Perch or any others (Perch works with static files, your site appears to be mostly database-driven and would need to remain database-driven for things like the search and other functionality to work).

ProcessWire is based around pages and all sorts of content is treated as pages. It uses its own database so you can't just say "use this unknown database here for old pages and the PW database for new pages". Even if the database structure were the same (and I guarantee they won't be) it would still be very difficult to achieve and not worth your time.

To get any CMS playing well with your current database you would have to write a lot of custom code, which is far harder than simply (and I realise it's not that simple) importing the current site into ProcessWire.

I do believe though that moving the existing content into ProcessWire would be easier than any other CMS I've used, and I've used quite a few over the years. The beauty is the content is already in a database so we don't have to parse any static pages to do the job - it means the relevant field contents from the existing DB can be more easily ported to related fields in ProcessWire. For example, you can bootstrap the API in an external PHP file, query and iterate through your current database and create pages like this: http://processwire.com/talk/topic/352-creating-pages-via-api/

There's no need to overhaul the site - the existing page templates are fine if you're happy with them - the content just needs moving across and all page queries replacing with ProcessWire selectors, which is easier than it sounds at first (and results in far less code ).