How to sell ProcessWire to my boss?

[Alpina]

Hello everyone!

I'm new to the forum and currently exploring a solution for our agency. I've had some limited experience with ProcessWire before and found it quite impressive. However, neither my colleagues nor my boss are familiar with it. I'm considering putting together a brief PowerPoint presentation for the team. Could anyone here point me to any marketing materials that could assist me in persuading my team to consider ProcessWire?

Thanks in advance!

[Jonathan Lahijani]

I wish I could write a longer reply but I'm going to be unavailable for a solid week, however check out what I wrote here (wrote it last week) which includes a lot of bullet points that you may find useful:

https://github.com/jlahijani/awesome-processwire?tab=readme-ov-file#why-processwire

Also welcome to the forum. You'll be in good company!

[elabx]

Not an exact answer, but this excellent post might give you some direction on how you can approach this conversation with your boss and collueagues in terms of business.

 

[Kiwi Chris]

I don't have a link, but some bullet points of things I like about it.

• Clear separation between data and presentation layers (but doesn't force you into a SPA or operate as a headless CMS although you can do that with it if you want).
• Excellent permissions management system at both template and individual field level.
• Simple object model - everything is a 'page' with 'fields' - (similar to Drupal's nodes, but without the baggage).
• Great admin UI for no code creation of pretty much any kind of structured data.
• Actively developed third party migrations module (RockMigrations) that lets you mix and match visual and code based development of object definitions.
• Excellent third-party debugging tool, TracyDebugger
• Easy to learn API (I managed to understand the basics of it within half an hour - Drupal and WordPress by comparison, I was still scratching my head after quite a few hours.)
• Secure
• Fast

Things people might not like about ProcessWire:

• You're unlikely to be able to build a website with one-click install. There are some site profiles that may suit some scenarios, but the whole point of ProcessWire is that it doesn't second guess you and force its opinions on you. 
• ProcessWire's only area where it is somewhat opinionated is how it stores and structures data at the SQL level. Currently it only supports mySQL/MariaDB, and normally each field has its own table in the database, although ProFields modules Table, and Combo allow more traditional database table structures. It's also relatively easy to build custom fieldtype modules with their own database schemas.
• Version/source control: If you don't use a third party module like RockMigrations, syncing data changes between development and production with a team of developers might be complicated. (Actual output templates are no problem)

[wbmnfktr]

Quoting myself:

1. Customized templates and fields
   Each and every content type only has the fields it really needs.
   Books, companies, recipes - it doesn't matter what kind of data my clients or I have to deal with. The templates and fields will reflect that. Therefore clients don't even have to learn anything in regards to creating or editing data. Super easy.
    
2. It's typesafe (by my definition)
   We can discuss the meaning of 'typesafe' here but... I think ProcessWire is somewhat typesafe because I define each field, template, relationship, and almost everything else. I know where to expect what kind of data and know what data is allowed in which field. No guessing, no errors. (Sure this depends on your setup and your will to invest some time.)
    
3. Works perfectly fine for non-developers
   I won't call myself a coder or programmer - I just tinker around with code and have fun. When I started using ProcessWire, getting around was super easy, and learning the fundamentals took only a day or two. From there on, it was easy-going. It's impressive what you can achieve with only some if/foreach/echo in PHP/ProcessWire. I said it a few years back and still stand behind it: ProcessWire seems to be the easiest way to learn and work with PHP.
    
4. Low maintenance
   There are ProcessWire projects of mine that haven't been updated in the last 5+ years and still work without any PHP or security issues. The moment a project is finished and works without flaws it will do so for a very long time. There is no real need to update a project.
    
5. Small footprint, high performance
   A ProcessWire website doesn't need that much of a big hosting package. The moment you start using Core cache functionalities or even ProCache most websites are fine and ready for an average amount of traffic. Maybe not ready for a slashdot/reddit/ProductHunt-peak but that's a totally different story. I can get so much out of ProcessWire compared to WordPress (and others I used/tested in the past).
    
6. ZIP downloads and no real need for a package manager
   What I really love and enjoy is that you can get everything as a ZIP file, unpack those, move them around and do whatever you want or need with them. Not needing NPM or composer to get started - like in the good old days - is just perfect. In the last 1-2 years I did a lot with NPM due to 11ty and Astro, yet an old-school ZIP file has its very own charme. For comparison: Installing CraftCMS feels good and really nice, yet I absolute don't know what's happening, what is needed, and so on. It's like a blackbox. It works but I don't know why. I hate that.

 

see thread here:

 

[Alpina]

Good stuff. Thank you all!

Edited May 16 by Alpina

[TomPich]

I also like to give my clients some links to articles about PW :

• Article on PW by IONOS
• Article on PW by London web agency Net Dreams
• Article on PW by British web agency Presto
• ProcessWire vs WordPress on cmscritic.com

And nice websites built with PW :

• Australian Antartic Program
• Nienburg Mittelweser
• Peggy Guggenheim Collection
• Herzzentrum Bonn
• Austrian Bankers Association
• BMW Dealersites
• University of Florida / IFAS Assessment

and hundreds of others on  this page.

[flydev]

Welcome @Alpina

You can also find condensed informations on this - GPT - thread (I just posted a result to start a presentation slide).

 

 

9 hours ago, Jonathan Lahijani said:

I wish I could write a longer reply but I'm going to be unavailable for a solid week, however check out what I wrote here (wrote it last week) which includes a lot of bullet points that you may find useful:

https://github.com/jlahijani/awesome-processwire?tab=readme-ov-file#why-processwire

Also welcome to the forum. You'll be in good company!

@Alpina do not miss Jonathan Lahijani signature link 😁
 

 

[elabx]

We gotta pin all of these somewhere!

Maybe here: https://github.com/jlahijani/awesome-processwire ??

[wbmnfktr]

30 minutes ago, elabx said:

Maybe here: https://github.com/jlahijani/awesome-processwire

And we all should put that link into our signature. Otherwise we would probably forget it again. 😂

[dotnetic]

Don't forget my blog article "Why ProcessWire is the best CMS for your website" https://dotnetic.de/blog/processwire-the-best-cms

[virtualgadjo]

hi,

i'd like to add another "little" argument i often use to convince clients/agencies/bosses and so on, this exact forum...

a client could rightly be concerned about something that happens quite often,: if ever, for any reason we had to stop working together, will another dev be able to take care of our website?
of course, all the reasons i've seen here will help with yes, pw is not that hard to learn, they are other devs working with it... but, and that's my point here, a dev who is not (yet) pw addict and will start working with will find a very good and friendly place to get help, a place where beginners are never scornfully sent to go and see elsewhere with a harsh "rtfm", this could add a comfortng reason to say, ok, let's go with it 🙂

have a nice day