May I email you a few questions about the program (only like 5 or so short answer) The person I was supposed to interview in person has backed out on me and I would really like to collect some more data before I finish my report.

Thanks for your help!

Actually the structure for social networking is all there. I at one time thought social networks and c5 wasn't possible, than I learned a bit more about whats actually under the hood. Was able to build a social networking site for gamers with with full forum, chatrooms, file sharing, image posting. and more in very little time with only a moderate amount of difficulty. I have used dolphin in the past, and found C5 to be the far superior product.

When it comes to everything else C5 completely dominates. Doesnt matter what your building, you have flexibility in design, and function that isnt seen in the blog builders disguised as site builders, and the platform as well as community is constantly updating their add-ons, and evolving to stay right on the cutting edge of webwork. Doesn't matter what your building, do it in c5, and you will thank yourself later.

I'll add some more:

Pros:
- It's Open Source, released under an MIT license.
- The core system is free of cost. Many add-ons are free.
- There is a centralised location for add-ons and discussion (don't have to hunt around the web and get plugins from random websites)
- It's commercially backed (in other words, there is a company supporting, working on the system, it's not just a community only project)
- It can be 'white-labeled' if necessary (putting your own branding on it, calling it something different).
- It has a published API and strong documentation
- It uses an MVC pattern
- It's got a good record security wise, and isn't commonly targeted for hacking
- It outputs fairly clean/semantically correct HTML. Can output HTML5.

Cons:
- It's a fairly complex system code wise, with a large number of files
- It's not a 'lightweight' CMS and does a lot of processing per page load
- Although the interface has been translated into other languages, I don't believe this is anywhere as complete as say the translations for Wordpress or Joomla.
- It's harder to find a developer for concrete5 as it's just not as well known as others
- It takes a fairly broad approach to what it is, it's not a blog, it's not an online shop or a forum, but it can be made to be these things. This means it's not as fully features or as focused on these tasks as other projects that are specifically for these tasks. (maybe not a con, but a consideration)

What I like best is how I don't feel worried training clients to use the system. I also like how well designed it is to extend, built add-ons for and theme. Page types and page attributes are my favourites features that solve the most problems.

What I wished was different was was that it played a bit more nicely with CSS frameworks (but I think most CMSes would have trouble anyway). I could write a short wish-list of things I'd like to see added or changed, but they'd be quite specific things that wouldn't apply to everyone.

That's enough from me!

Cheers
-Ryan

I wouldn't mind seeing your short wish-list. In this situation I could use all the data I can get--my person who I was supposed to interview this week backed out on me :(

I have another questions if you don't mind answering it...

From looking at Concrete5 online and looking at users’ recommendations—it seems as if Concrete5 is a good system for static web pages and for people who don’t want to ever look at a line of code. Would you say that this is accurate?

no. absolutely not.

It's true, It's perfect for end users in that you have the simple "what you see is what you get" model. blocks, editors, click'n'add or move....ect.

But the backend is completely MVC OOP. And any pro developer worth his salt would be ecstatic about this.

So way better than most CMS actually. Great MVC OOP for devs, very extensible. And yet perfect for people who don't want to look at code much.

But no, do not generalize it into "only good for people who don't code". That would be a tragic generalization.

ChadStrat

Feel free to put more questions up here. I'm happy to answer more questions personally, but I think you'd be better to publicly ask them so that you get broader, more generalised responses rather than specific answers from individuals.

Just an idea, if you have time, maybe you could whip up a quick survey (survey monkey or similar) and post it on here. I'm sure you'd get a handful of people completing it (if it wasn't too long).

(keep in mind that they'd be no point asking questions like 'what is your favourite CMS' to a group of people on the concrete5 forums, you'd have to have make your questions specific to concrete5, or have more written type answers)

Hi,

I'm having a developer build a company website (providing SEO services). He recommends using Contrete5. I have not heard of this CMS before, but I am familiar with WordPress and Plone.

My requirements are pretty straightforward, an informational based website *with some (visuals)that I can freely edit/add pagesto. Pretty basic use. Nothing fancy or overly complicated.

What are your thoughts on this? I have a feeling that the developer is making an overly complicated system for a very simple solution.

Thanks!

Z

Hi Zeeman007

Concrete5 is a very flexible CMS it can be used for tiny sites with a handful of pages, or it can be used to build behemoth sites with many thousands of pages equally as well.

The true beauty of Concrete5 is the fact that it is extremely end user friendly, i.e you, if you want to add pages and make simple edits then your developer by using Concrete5 is giving you an easy life.

Obviously I dont know what your Developer is telling you, but Concrete5 can be used for all sorts of different sites, with great effect, Wordpress is primarily a Publishing platform that is often moulded into a CMS, Concrete5 is CMS through and through.

Regards

David