Concrete5 Review. Critics
Permalink
First I did not post this to make concrete5 look bad.
I just want all of us see other people review on concrete5, and hopefully can improve next version of concrete5
http://www.designvsdevelop.com/concrete5-first-impressions/...
What’s annoying
While the simplicity of editing individual pages is definitely something I prefer, concrete5 has sacrificed some features to get there. I was not able to find any kind of feature to create a blog-style index of content made up of blurbs from other pages. Add-ons are scarce: if you’re looking for a forum or shopping cart, you might be in for a wait until they attract more developers to the platform.
I ran into a few speed bumps when installing concrete5 locally. After downloading it and going to the installation screen, there was a checklist of PHP configuration settings necessary to run concrete5 (not unlike Joomla!’s). Most of them were good to go after tweaking folder permissions, but I did not have the GD library setup on my self-compiled version of PHP. I was a little surprised that the system would not let me continue installation. While I’m sure there are features in concrete5 that use server-side image processing, this doesn’t strike me as something so vital as to halt installation. (I was able to successfully install both GD and concrete5 on my spare Ubuntu machine.)
Although the GD dependency was annoying, the halted installation uncovers something even more so. If the installer detects even the slightest issue with your configuration, an advertisement for professional installation is displayed. Quite tacky; they could have at least provided a link to their installation forum.
Which brings us to community. This company oozes a know-it-all attitude. In sharp contrast to the websites of other CMSes, their official About page openly bashes Joomla!, Drupal, and WordPress; painting all three in rather broad strokes. This is very disappointing, unnecessary, and ultimately counter-productive. I’m all for making bold statements, but they’re driving away the very people who could help their platform grow quickly.
Please add yours
I just want all of us see other people review on concrete5, and hopefully can improve next version of concrete5
http://www.designvsdevelop.com/concrete5-first-impressions/...
What’s annoying
While the simplicity of editing individual pages is definitely something I prefer, concrete5 has sacrificed some features to get there. I was not able to find any kind of feature to create a blog-style index of content made up of blurbs from other pages. Add-ons are scarce: if you’re looking for a forum or shopping cart, you might be in for a wait until they attract more developers to the platform.
I ran into a few speed bumps when installing concrete5 locally. After downloading it and going to the installation screen, there was a checklist of PHP configuration settings necessary to run concrete5 (not unlike Joomla!’s). Most of them were good to go after tweaking folder permissions, but I did not have the GD library setup on my self-compiled version of PHP. I was a little surprised that the system would not let me continue installation. While I’m sure there are features in concrete5 that use server-side image processing, this doesn’t strike me as something so vital as to halt installation. (I was able to successfully install both GD and concrete5 on my spare Ubuntu machine.)
Although the GD dependency was annoying, the halted installation uncovers something even more so. If the installer detects even the slightest issue with your configuration, an advertisement for professional installation is displayed. Quite tacky; they could have at least provided a link to their installation forum.
Which brings us to community. This company oozes a know-it-all attitude. In sharp contrast to the websites of other CMSes, their official About page openly bashes Joomla!, Drupal, and WordPress; painting all three in rather broad strokes. This is very disappointing, unnecessary, and ultimately counter-productive. I’m all for making bold statements, but they’re driving away the very people who could help their platform grow quickly.
Please add yours
http://www.cmsdesignresource.com/cms-list/concrete5/
community only get 3,5 /5
Either your question in the community is answered quickly, or you watch your post sink lower and lower into the depths of the forums. Wish the community could be a little stronger in the responsiveness to the posts of newer customers getting used to the product.
community only get 3,5 /5
Either your question in the community is answered quickly, or you watch your post sink lower and lower into the depths of the forums. Wish the community could be a little stronger in the responsiveness to the posts of newer customers getting used to the product.
The cmsdesignresource.com review are from the 5.4.0.2 release (April 2010) and since you signed up yesterday I think you should make your own assumptions first before relying on outdated information.
...seems like a troll in the making here...
...seems like a troll in the making here...
The article you link to is from April 17th, 2009 (almost three years ago) and much have changed since then...
As for the structure in the "Files" folder, that has been discussed and answered in the forums several times (just use search).
When it comes to performance there are numerous things you can do to speed it up - once again search the forums. I managed to speed my site up after just a 10 minute search and some backend tweeks.
As for the structure in the "Files" folder, that has been discussed and answered in the forums several times (just use search).
When it comes to performance there are numerous things you can do to speed it up - once again search the forums. I managed to speed my site up after just a 10 minute search and some backend tweeks.
Sorry I did not mean to troll.
but I want concrete5 better.
but I want concrete5 better.
Hi Utomo,
I would just like to take this opportunity to welcome you the Concrete 5 community. You have been a busy person on the forums considering you only signed up yesterday.
If you would like to contribute to the development of C5 your constructive comments are always welcomed but out of date reviews aren't!
I would just like to take this opportunity to welcome you the Concrete 5 community. You have been a busy person on the forums considering you only signed up yesterday.
If you would like to contribute to the development of C5 your constructive comments are always welcomed but out of date reviews aren't!
I think this thread shows quite clearly what is missing from the basic documentation. The "no blog" issue was also one of my concerns when I first found out concrete5. However, in the latest versions of c5, there is now the "composer" functionality built-in into the core with which you can build a blog-like publishing system. However, by no means a beginner can find out easily how to build a blog with that.
I actually still feel that it would be beneficial for c5 to put some thought into including some ready-made parts for composer blog/news publishing system into the core. This is because this is quite a common feature needed on most of the sites (at least that I make). This is also the reason why I still turn out for WordPress if I need to build "just a blog" although the reason for that is only the writing interface in WordPress (one single page!) that I see easier for possible clients than finding out how concrete5 composer works with its drafts and auto-saving.
There are also multiple commercial add-ons for building a simple blog but I would see it vastly beneficial to have such system already build-in because it's needed so often. The basic composer with no pre-defined setup leaves the beginner user thinking what this all is about.
Concrete5.5.x also introduces the "starting points" of which one is blog that gives you some kind of "ready setup" for a simple blog but I still don't find it quite usable when comparing to e.g. WordPress.
For the dependency issues I would disagree, most sites need images and concrete5 also makes some thumbnailing etc. automatically so I would see it as a "must have" requirement before doing the installation. If you just need plain few page site without any images, why not use plain HTML for that?
The file structure has also been discussed before and while it brings the advantage of being secure, it is very confusing also to human mind. I was also confused with it when I started with c5 but now after few years of active development I've noticed that I don't need to touch the files physically. However, there has been also some discussion that some people like handling the files manually e.g. with FTP but this is just a choice c5 has made because of other benefits.
About hosting: yes, c5 needs resources and it's quite heavy for the server. Many shared hosting don't have any cache library installed which is a drawback when using concrete5. However, I really see this more of an issue of choosing the right hosting provider. C5 isn't supposed to be used on shared hosting without any cache and I think why this isn't said anywhere clearly is that it would probably turn down some possible users.
Antti / Mainio
I actually still feel that it would be beneficial for c5 to put some thought into including some ready-made parts for composer blog/news publishing system into the core. This is because this is quite a common feature needed on most of the sites (at least that I make). This is also the reason why I still turn out for WordPress if I need to build "just a blog" although the reason for that is only the writing interface in WordPress (one single page!) that I see easier for possible clients than finding out how concrete5 composer works with its drafts and auto-saving.
There are also multiple commercial add-ons for building a simple blog but I would see it vastly beneficial to have such system already build-in because it's needed so often. The basic composer with no pre-defined setup leaves the beginner user thinking what this all is about.
Concrete5.5.x also introduces the "starting points" of which one is blog that gives you some kind of "ready setup" for a simple blog but I still don't find it quite usable when comparing to e.g. WordPress.
For the dependency issues I would disagree, most sites need images and concrete5 also makes some thumbnailing etc. automatically so I would see it as a "must have" requirement before doing the installation. If you just need plain few page site without any images, why not use plain HTML for that?
The file structure has also been discussed before and while it brings the advantage of being secure, it is very confusing also to human mind. I was also confused with it when I started with c5 but now after few years of active development I've noticed that I don't need to touch the files physically. However, there has been also some discussion that some people like handling the files manually e.g. with FTP but this is just a choice c5 has made because of other benefits.
About hosting: yes, c5 needs resources and it's quite heavy for the server. Many shared hosting don't have any cache library installed which is a drawback when using concrete5. However, I really see this more of an issue of choosing the right hosting provider. C5 isn't supposed to be used on shared hosting without any cache and I think why this isn't said anywhere clearly is that it would probably turn down some possible users.
Antti / Mainio
Education is something we struggle with on a daily basis. We've done so much to concrete5 since release that getting the word out is really tough.
BTW - the 5.5.0 sample content does indeed include the blog as an enabled composer page type. I agree that some sort of core how-tos or something – "you need to read these 6 documents" type of thing would be really helpful. There's so much that's possible but it's hard fighting all these old articles that are out there.
BTW - the 5.5.0 sample content does indeed include the blog as an enabled composer page type. I agree that some sort of core how-tos or something – "you need to read these 6 documents" type of thing would be really helpful. There's so much that's possible but it's hard fighting all these old articles that are out there.
Sorry cant take that article seriously at all.
A/ Its written by a Joomla evangelist, any attempt at impartiality cant be trusted.
B/ Its as old as the hills, C5 has come a long way since then.
C/ The criticisms leveled at the community are inaccurate, a less experienced user asking a question, answered by an experienced member, does not make them a know-it-all, it makes them helpful.
A/ Its written by a Joomla evangelist, any attempt at impartiality cant be trusted.
B/ Its as old as the hills, C5 has come a long way since then.
C/ The criticisms leveled at the community are inaccurate, a less experienced user asking a question, answered by an experienced member, does not make them a know-it-all, it makes them helpful.
- Images are stored in a not-so-intuitive directories. I tried to download back up of images once and it has hundreds of numbered directories going down many level. (9100/9177/14/36/pic something like that) While the images can be found without much problem within the CMS browser's, it's almost impossible to actually find your own images from their actual directories.
Personally I wish they'd let us categorize our images into directories ourselves instead of using that tag thing.
- Most hostings that I normally use (Thailand based hostings) all take a really huge performance hit with concrete 5. I don't know why but concrete 5 is always fast when testing locally. Once uploaded onto live servers, it's slow. Slow to load even the simplest of pages. A little note that these same hosts runs Xenforo at lighting speed.