thetuningspoon Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 OH. MY. GOD. Tell me I'm not dreaming! I've been scouring the Internet for weeks looking for a CMS that would allow me to give my clients a decent user experience. I've developed sites in Joomla, Drupal, Silverstripe, and Wordpress. Joomla was a nightmare of epic proportions. The admin interface is confusing and inconsistent. Drupal had promise in theory, but trying to customize it just caused it to bug out. Silverstripe is nice, but the admin panel is slow and clunky. Wordpress is great for blogs, but feels like you're hacking it if you're trying to use it for more than that. After my frustrations with the big name CMSs, I decided to try and get a better lay of the land and see what else was out there. Every one of them was either lacking a crucial feature, poor on the usability front, or a buggy mess. I have some programming knowledge, but mainly I am a designer looking for a CMS that lets me design the client's experience in the same way that I'm able to design the end user's experience. I don't need templates or templating languages. I want something that lets me be the designer and then gives my clients the power to work with what I've developed. As someone deeply concerned about user experience, I don't understand it. How could so many developers get this so wrong? Were they just throwing these things together without thinking about the use cases? The need for flexibility? What people actually NEED in a CMS? I was beginning to think I'd have to become a PHP developer and build something from scratch. So far, what I see in ProcessWire is almost exactly the ideal CMS I have been piecing together in my mind's eye. The consistency in the mental design model, the absolutely crucial ability to create your own page types and custom fields for your clients which is utterly lacking or nonexistant in nearly every major CMS, the ability for logged in users to easily update a page they're on by simply hitting an "edit" link from the front end... Elegant, logical, and flexible. It's obvious that you've put a lot of thought into this. Thank you. I can't wait to get started. 5 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
slkwrm Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 Welcome, Everfreecreavtive. I have to say, my thoughts were very similar to yours when I found this great CMS (and great community). I was very frustrated in my quest of simplicity in CMS scripts. When I found it I was amazed how simple yet powerful it is. Actually, I still can't fully believe that this CMS is a brainchild of one man It's too good to exist, but you're not dreaming. Just remembered (using google ) a good quote of Einstein on the topic: Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thetuningspoon Posted February 27, 2012 Author Share Posted February 27, 2012 I'm going through the documentation and I just keep on thinking "yes! yes! YES!" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 That'll keep happening a lot throughout your experience I'm sure. I kept looking for more complicated ways to accomplish things in ProcessWire when it turns out that the majority of the time there's a really simple solution. Of course it helps if you know a bit of PHP for the templating side of things, but I'd go so far as to say that the small bit you will need for most projects is easily learned from the default templates. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thetuningspoon Posted February 27, 2012 Author Share Posted February 27, 2012 Thanks for the welcome, guys. I'm pretty solid with the basics of php, so Processwire is good for me in that regard. I've never understood the point of having a separate templating language. It's not much easier for people who don't know php and it just makes it harder for those who do to understand how the app is working behind the scenes. I can't imagine it helps with site performance, either. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ryan Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 Welcome everfreecreative--Thanks for your great feedback. But you guys are way too kind. Still, I was having a bad day yesterday (got stuck attempting to fix a client's server issue all day) and these posts turned it around for me--ended the weekend on a positive note--thanks for this! I appreciate the enthusiasm and it is contagious--makes me want to work on PW all day. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Soma Posted February 27, 2012 Share Posted February 27, 2012 No, you're not dreaming, but it's like a dream! 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thetuningspoon Posted February 28, 2012 Author Share Posted February 28, 2012 Welcome everfreecreative--Thanks for your great feedback. Hey Ryan, thanks for the welcome. And thank you for all the work you've put and continue to put into this wonderful application! I appreciate the enthusiasm and it is contagious--makes me want to work on PW all day. Whatever I can do to help! 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
raydale Posted February 28, 2012 Share Posted February 28, 2012 Hi Everfreecreative, I remember having a similar reaction to you when I discovered PW. I have been thoroughly battle testing it on two projects recently and that eureka feeling still hasn't worn off yet. PW is just a dream to work with - especially for designers who like to write their own semantic HTML and not have a CMS generate for you (badly). The new repeating fields and field contexts being worked on are going to be a huge help in delivering a usable admin environment to clients. 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thetuningspoon Posted February 28, 2012 Author Share Posted February 28, 2012 I have been thoroughly battle testing it on two projects recently and that eureka feeling still hasn't worn off yet. PW is just a dream to work with - especially for designers who like to write their own semantic HTML and not have a CMS generate for you (badly). Happy to hear the love is more than surface deep! I'm extremely happy with it so far. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
leroj Posted March 1, 2012 Share Posted March 1, 2012 Hi Everfreecreative, and welcome! I had the same reaction when discovered PW , after testing a dozen of CMS-es Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveP Posted March 1, 2012 Share Posted March 1, 2012 PW reminds me of brunch, as described by Jacques in The Simpsons - "It’s not quite breakfast, it’s not quite lunch, but it comes with a slice of cantaloupe at the end." For breakfast, read frameworks like CodeIgniter or CakePHP and for lunch read CMSs like Joomla or Drupal. And the slice of cantaloupe is the "OH. MY. GOD." moments that just keep happening. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nikola Posted March 1, 2012 Share Posted March 1, 2012 I totally agree, PW is mind blowing. I've used WordPress and SilverStripe before and they were a mess. I like the simplicity that PW offers to designers - I can design a site in Photoshop, make a pure XHTML/CSS templates, think little about API functions and voila, a site is born. I haven't used full PW potential yet, but so far every site I've made came out exactly as I planned. So thanks again, Ryan 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frank Vèssia Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 Welcome in the PW world... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zach Posted March 4, 2012 Share Posted March 4, 2012 +1 everfreecreative While developing my own site using other CMS's the basic functionality I desired was either too complicated to engineer or too inflexible in design, but then I found PW. I still have a ways to go before my official site launch, but I doubt I will hit any major road blocks that will force me to look for something different. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bill Posted March 5, 2012 Share Posted March 5, 2012 I'm going through the documentation and I just keep on thinking "yes! yes! YES!" LMBO! I agree tho . I'm feeling pretty stupid... i set aside 2 hours this afternoon to finally poke around... 5 minutes later, i'm not sure what to do, cuz I already understand what I thought would take me - well, ... the 2 hours lol. Bill 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted March 6, 2012 Share Posted March 6, 2012 I'm feeling pretty stupid... i set aside 2 hours this afternoon to finally poke around... 5 minutes later, i'm not sure what to do, cuz I already understand what I thought would take me - well, ... the 2 hours lol. I love it when that happens - happened to me with something the other day (although it was half an hour to do something I thought would take half a day - same principle). It certainly starts to make up for those frustrating times when running into coding roadblocks - those tedious ones where the answer turns out to be easy, but only after lots of time and swearing - I much prefer it when it happens this way around 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
statestreet Posted March 22, 2012 Share Posted March 22, 2012 Oh, man. I'm having to go back to WordPress for this project that's on a tight timeframe, and every single thing I do, whether it's trying to find an appropriate plugin, or hacking the ThemeForest theme to get something to work, I keep thinking of how I'd just do it the right way in ProcessWire. Sooo painful. I can't wait until I get to use PW again! 3 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thetuningspoon Posted March 30, 2012 Author Share Posted March 30, 2012 Oh, man. I'm having to go back to WordPress for this project that's on a tight timeframe, and every single thing I do, whether it's trying to find an appropriate plugin, or hacking the ThemeForest theme to get something to work, I keep thinking of how I'd just do it the right way in ProcessWire. Sooo painful. I can't wait until I get to use PW again! I know, right? I've had to go back and work on Joomla sites and it's just such a chore to do anything, even simple updates. Processwire is clean and logical, and just a joy to work with. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveP Posted March 30, 2012 Share Posted March 30, 2012 Absolutely the same here. Wordpress is such a pain. It's like Russian Roulette installing plugins - will it work, won't it, will it break something else? And the other extreme is something like CodeIgniter, which I do like, but is so long-winded. I found myself editing a CI view file yesterday and just wanted to add the page url for some reason, so I typed <?php echo $page->url; ?> and I was quite surprised when the bloody gormless page didn't even know its own url! You do get used to the luxury of PW. And it scales too. That's a screen shot of an intranet project I'm working on. Now I just need to decide whether or not to import the whole UK postcode file ('postcodes' in the screen shot is just the outer part like NW1) - I have the whole list right down to, say NW1 1AB and including their grid references, just the 1,692,241 rows! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted March 30, 2012 Share Posted March 30, 2012 Ouch! Those files cost a bit of money don't they? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveP Posted March 30, 2012 Share Posted March 30, 2012 Ouch! Those files cost a bit of money don't they? No, they've open sourced them! https://www.ordnance...d/products.html Scroll down a bit for 'Code-Point Open'. The Post Office PAF file cost (and probably still does) Brewster's, but these are freebies (albeit a hefty download). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pete Posted March 30, 2012 Share Posted March 30, 2012 Wow! That's pretty awesome! There are some exciting things you can do when calculating a radius from a given postcode for finding things nearby (as the crow flies) etc, so this is very good news indeed and ideal for an upcoming project. That's the other thing I love about these forums - you find out cool new stuff every day because the community likes to share Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DaveP Posted March 30, 2012 Share Posted March 30, 2012 I found some code for calculating the nearest points (postcode x,y) using a mySQL spatial point field in each postcode record. I'm using it in an extranet project at work so if an advertiser asks one of our reps if we have other sites nearby, they can find out which, and how near. It is only on my office development system at the moment and unfortunately, the first query takes about 15 seconds to do the math on the whole 1.6 million postcodes, but once the cache is primed, subsequent queries are sub-second. <edit>Sorry, this has gone a bit off-topic.</edit> Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Michael Murphy Posted April 1, 2012 Share Posted April 1, 2012 @DaveP - thanks for sharing. So you managed to use PW with 1.6 million pages (for each UK postcode)? Interesting to hear how far people have pushed the system. The most I have tried so far is 1,800 pages. I have an upcoming project that will need ~ 100,000 pages, so wondering if PW would be suitable. It's not really a public facing website, more a tool that will be used by a few people for analysing and aggregating data, like your nearby intranet tool. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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