1,000 reasons why C5 rocks
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My number one reason why I love C5 is because when I started building websites the fax machine was considered the ultimate technological achievement. Just kidding, the fax machine was never considered good by anybody. But in all seriousness there was no CMS systems when I started, so websites were commonly known as "web pages linked together". In fact most people commonly used the terms webpage to refer to their entire site which was never correct, but reflected how everybody saw websites, as a page, or set of pages linked together.
Along comes the concept of the CMS and the single controller, routing etc. I'm not sure which was invented first, I missed that bit of history but at some point the decision was made that websites no longer had "pages". Which is crazy because obviously people still understand websites as collections of pages. But no longer did systems like Drupal. Instead they dynamically generated pages based on criteria, and the concept of a page was largely lost. CMS systems like Drupal, and WP, more or less have nominal awareness of their page structure. Meaning in practical terms, neither of those systems could build a site map like the kind seen in C5. Not accurately at least. Sure you can try to put together a full list of all URL's in a WP site, many plugins do that exact thing, but there is almost always something missing. Some plugin that creates pages but those pages cannot be listed in a centralized way.
C5 brings back the sanity of website pages. A website page, is a website page. What a novel concept. And as we have C5.7 coming out and many people trying it and some liking it, some questioning it, let us not forget how great it is to have a site map. To me, that's reason #1 why C5 rocks, whether it's C5.6 or C5.7. It's not a new feature, it's a fundamental part of C5 and it might not be #1 on everyone's list. But to me, that's the first of many reasons I enjoy working with C5. The consistency of knowing exactly what pages are in any given site at any time.
This post is 999 reasons short on why C5 rocks...
Along comes the concept of the CMS and the single controller, routing etc. I'm not sure which was invented first, I missed that bit of history but at some point the decision was made that websites no longer had "pages". Which is crazy because obviously people still understand websites as collections of pages. But no longer did systems like Drupal. Instead they dynamically generated pages based on criteria, and the concept of a page was largely lost. CMS systems like Drupal, and WP, more or less have nominal awareness of their page structure. Meaning in practical terms, neither of those systems could build a site map like the kind seen in C5. Not accurately at least. Sure you can try to put together a full list of all URL's in a WP site, many plugins do that exact thing, but there is almost always something missing. Some plugin that creates pages but those pages cannot be listed in a centralized way.
C5 brings back the sanity of website pages. A website page, is a website page. What a novel concept. And as we have C5.7 coming out and many people trying it and some liking it, some questioning it, let us not forget how great it is to have a site map. To me, that's reason #1 why C5 rocks, whether it's C5.6 or C5.7. It's not a new feature, it's a fundamental part of C5 and it might not be #1 on everyone's list. But to me, that's the first of many reasons I enjoy working with C5. The consistency of knowing exactly what pages are in any given site at any time.
This post is 999 reasons short on why C5 rocks...
My #1 reason for why I think C5 rocks is a fairly obvious one, one that is perhaps the main attraction I had to the system when I first was exploring alternatives to Joomla and Wordpress.
It's the ability to easy add and manage content to _multiple_ editable regions on a page.
Instead of having a monolithic 'article' content area and additional areas that are sort of hacky to manage, concrete5 simply allows you to define as many editable regions on a page template that you need. Each editable area is only 2 simple lines of code! Then you can even drag and drop content and different kinds of blocks between these areas.
It has always felt awkward with other systems explaining 'if you want to edit this bit of content on the page, go to this part of the administration, but if you want to edit these sidebars, you need to go here, then here, then here...'.
With C5, we can simply say 'edit any editable part of the page you like in the same way'.
It's the ability to easy add and manage content to _multiple_ editable regions on a page.
Instead of having a monolithic 'article' content area and additional areas that are sort of hacky to manage, concrete5 simply allows you to define as many editable regions on a page template that you need. Each editable area is only 2 simple lines of code! Then you can even drag and drop content and different kinds of blocks between these areas.
It has always felt awkward with other systems explaining 'if you want to edit this bit of content on the page, go to this part of the administration, but if you want to edit these sidebars, you need to go here, then here, then here...'.
With C5, we can simply say 'edit any editable part of the page you like in the same way'.
Why I love Concrete5? Well so many reasons but if I could just mention a few
1) Simplicity and flexibility both in designing and editing/managing websites - custom block templates, style customizer, presets, grid support, bulk SEO, composer, inline editing
2) Ease of extending/overriding the core and core block types; Attributes; Creating new themes and block types (standalone or packaged) using properly structured code (MVC)
3) Separation of reusable content and common/shared elements (Stacks and Global Areas); Page types and page templates and now with 5.7 Assets sub-system (shared css and js)
4) Our concrete5 community: Everyone's invited - I love that both the core team and members with varying skill levels are so involved in the forums and chip in from time to time.
1) Simplicity and flexibility both in designing and editing/managing websites - custom block templates, style customizer, presets, grid support, bulk SEO, composer, inline editing
2) Ease of extending/overriding the core and core block types; Attributes; Creating new themes and block types (standalone or packaged) using properly structured code (MVC)
3) Separation of reusable content and common/shared elements (Stacks and Global Areas); Page types and page templates and now with 5.7 Assets sub-system (shared css and js)
4) Our concrete5 community: Everyone's invited - I love that both the core team and members with varying skill levels are so involved in the forums and chip in from time to time.
This allows me to improve my programming knowledge as a I learn how 5.7 works and how to develop for it.