If the website you're creating is primarily a blog, then without a doubt you should use wordpress. If on the other hand the website is *not* a blog at all, I would say probably use Concrete5. If it's somewhere in the middle (like half blog and half normal informational site), well then there's not really an easy answer as it depends on what you're already familiar with, if certain themes exist that you want to use for one platform or the other, etc.
Another factor that seems to apply to you is that there's a plugin available for wordpress (the webcomic thing), which as far as I know does not exist for Concrete5 -- so if webcomics are the primary purpose of your site, it probably makes sense to use that with wordpress instead of Concrete5.

Lastly, Concrete5 is a bit newer than wordpress, which makes it better in terms of cleaner architecture and designer-friendly templating (for non-blog sites), but it's worse in terms of the amount of documentation and references and help forums available.

So unless your site is 100% blog or 0% blog, there's not really an easy answer -- but I hope this info helps you in making your decision.

(Oh, and one last thing -- be aware that if you post this question to a Concrete5 forum, 99% of the answers you receive will say "yes use c5 it's the best!", whereas if you post this question to a Wordpress forum, 99% of the answers you receive will say "yes use Wordpress it's the best!" -- so take that into consideration when weighing the responses you get)

Good luck!

-Jordan

Thanks! I really liked to the idea of a better website platform with some blog capabilities than trying to force a blog become a site.

If this site was made with concrete5, are all the portions here part of the base installation? like the forums, or those are separate modules?

I was also wondering where I could find some nice samples of sites that use concrete5 and themes.

My goal would be to create some kind of online portfolio/tutorialsite/webcomic/blog with the potential to implement some future online commerce.

If you understand the concept of "trying to force a blog to become a site" then I think Concrete5 would be perfect for you :) I would venture to guess that a majority of Concrete5 devotees (myself included) fell in love with it primarily for that reason.

When you say "all the portions here", do you mean the concrete5.org site itself? The answer unfortunately is "no" -- I believe this concrete5.org site has a ton of customizations because it's purpose is very different from most informational/marketing sites that you would use Concrete5 for. There is a "forums" addon in the marketplace, which costs some money. There's also an eCommerce addon which costs some money too. Both would save you vast amounts of development time, though, so unless you have absolutely no budget they're well worth the cost.

There's a ton of sample Concrete5 sites you can view in the showcase:
http://www.concrete5.org/about/showcase/...

And here's another thread about this that might be useful to you:
http://www.concrete5.org/community/forums/chat/wordpress-developer-...

> Lastly, Concrete5 is a bit newer than wordpress, which makes it better in terms of cleaner architecture and designer-friendly templating (for non-blog sites), but it's worse in terms of the amount of documentation and references and help forums available.

I bought several add-ons for C5 (including, Pro Blog, ecommerce, etc.) and will do the site for our small business (counselling/homeopathy) clinic, but did two other sites (private one and one for non-profit) in WordPress.

Considering, we cannot buy every interesting block, especially without properly try-before-buy, we would like to be able to do some of our own development and wonder how does C5 compare with WP developer-wise (here, 'developer' is one with very little experience of PHP - I'm familiar with OOP concepts, did some Python and familiar with programming languages in general - and no MVC experience)?

Some non-dev advantages of WP are:
- fully translated in my native (Croatian) language - both core & default themes while I can't even get reply to mygengo request for C5 translation
- most of the plugins are freely available

Now, I do not have time to do both WP & C5 development, but wonder which one to choose to settle on it?

All I can say is that I feel that C5's docs could be better organized, but I haven't check WP's docs either.

Otoh, I'm aware that producing C5 theme is probably much easier than to do WP theme.

Let me say that I own C5 book, but, my critical remark about is that often is just writes about 'how' and not 'why', while I'd like to get more systematic approach to (C5) development?

Any hint?

My opinion is that C5 is much better to develop for than Wordpress, but Wordpress is much more well-documented than C5. If you're new to PHP then this unfortunately means that taking on custom C5 development will be somewhat challenging. (It will be challenging with Wordpress too -- but there are so many more tutorials, videos, books, blog posts, etc. for wordpress that it might be better overall).

You are asking which you should choose, but nobody can tell you for sure. What I would think about is how you best learn things -- is it by looking at other code and figuring it out on your own, or is it by going through step-by-step tutorials? If you are comfortable figuring out how things work by taking them apart and trying to understand what the code does, I think it's easier to do in Concrete5 because the system is so much more consistent and better-architected than wordpress. You can look at all the built-in blocks that come with the core system, and any free addons or themes in the marketplace to see how things are done. For blocks, I would especially recommend looking at the Designer Content addon (http://concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/designer-content... ), generate a super-simple block with just one text field in it (not the WYSIWYG editor as that will complicate things at first), then look at the code of the block it generates to see the absolute minimum you need to have a functioning block in Concrete5. I have spent a lot of time making that code simple and easy to read.

If, however, you are the kind of person that only learns by having a video or step-by-step tutorial, I think that Wordpress will be better for you because the docs just aren't there yet for C5. They will be some day for sure, but not today unfortunately.

> My opinion is that C5 is much better to develop for than Wordpress, but Wordpress is much more well-documented than C5.

Heh, that's nicely put together...

> If you're new to PHP then this unfortunately means that taking on custom C5 development will be somewhat challenging.

Yes, I'm.

> What I would think about is how you best learn things

I like to understand how things work...

> I think it's easier to do in Concrete5 because the system is so much more consistent and better-architected than wordpress.

This is nice to hear.

> You can look at all the built-in blocks that come with the core system, and any free addons or themes in the marketplace to see how things are done.

Thank you.

> For blocks, I would especially recommend looking at the Designer Content addon

This is very good advice. Thanks...btw, I just recently found out about it.

> If, however, you are the kind of person that only learns by having a video or step-by-step tutorial, I think that Wordpress will be better for you because the docs just aren't there yet for C5.

Well, my only (slight) criticism of C5 book is that it (sometimes) just gives 'how' without explaining 'why', although this is probably with majority of Packtpub books...so, for now I'll stay with C5 trying to learn more about it...at least until web2py gets some decent CMS. ;)

Thank you for your input.

Concrete5 is mad easy to theme:

http://www.concrete5.org/documentation/how-tos/designers/make-a-the...

(way more so than WP). That said, I have sites in both C5 and WP and agree with what Jordan is saying. If it's strictly a blog, go with WP. If you have other sections (forums, regular content, blog, etc), C5 is a great way to handle that. Check out the Forums & eCommerce packages in the Marketplace on this site (Marketplace > Add Ons). Again, they cost a bit of $$, but will save you hours upon hours of time.

And it comes with stickers and multi-attachment screwdrivers. That's what sold me.

- Josh