CMSB vs WordPress: Post your feedback!

Custom Built.  The admin is built around the needs of the client - rather than a more general "one-size-fits-all" approach.  (how often do you use all the functions in MS Word?)

Security.  WordPress has a bunch of installs out there, not maintained.  If I was a hacker, I would target those sites rather than a customer built solution.

Custom Design.  WordPress is great if you fit the templates, but if you want to break out of that cookie cutter approach, it will be an issue.

Growth. A custom built solution is designed to shift and change from the start.  As you grow, we can easily grow the site and it's functionality.

Experience. It seems that everyone is offering WordPress... that's because everyone can get it up and running.  However, as soon as something needs to be done that is not in the "template" those inexperienced guys will not be able to help.

Experience. A major part of my role is to listen to your needs and find solutions.  I've spent many years doing this. Many people offering WordPress and offering a boxed product - not a solution.

Thanks for the feedback, Tim!

Tim, you came up with the exact list that we use when discussing this with our clients.

The only other one I can add is "extremely extensible" without the need to install additional plug-ins.  Tim more or less touched on this in his experience bullet points.

We have had many customers that have had needs to add just a little something to the system.  It's easy to do with CMSB.

We do fight the uphill climb of explaining why we don't use WP.  Most times, customers just want something that works, but it's still an objection right off the bat that we have to fight.

One thing I'd love to see from the InteractiveTools team is an emphasis to work with outside vendors to get CMSB plugins developed. 

Just a couple of examples: we are looking at taking over a site that was done on Wix.  All of the "add-on" companies have WP and Wix add-ons.  For example, a scheduling engine, chat engine and newsletter system. It would be really nice if CMSB was one of the official add-ons available.

I was also recently working with a company that does reputation management.  They have WP plug-in or iframe mode.  It would be great to have a CMSB plug-in. 

These are just a couple of the places we have run into it.  It's really rampant at this point.

I do have to say that I've never been a WP developer because I find their system restrictive.  When talking with one of the owners of a big WP theme company he stated that he was surprised by my feelings because they feel it's very non-restrictive.  But yet, any time I want to do something the theme doesn't offer, it's a pain.  Therefore, we've completely stayed away from WP.

Another thing I'd love to see if more "isolation" of the CMSB code that's used in the actual site...OO methodology where the database connection and all CMSB functionality needed on the outward facing site is completely isolated.  I've written my own "cmsbclass" that I have to retrofit every time I get an update.  This allows CMSB to "play nice with others".  We use X-Cart for our shopping-cart system which is the reason I went with OO for CMSB in the first place.  It was impossible to use CMSB along with X-Cart without doing this.

I've submitted this class a few times over the years to IT, but it has never been implemented, probably because it does not do 100% of what's available in CMSB.  It only does what we've needed, but it covers probably 90% of the cases that the procedural code covers with the exception of some of the plug-ins.

While I know this is more than what the OP asked, I wanted to give a little more information of the frustration we run into at times.

Hi Gary, 

Thanks for your feedback on Wordpress vs CMSB and feature suggestions!

Re: More addons and outside vendors - we're exactly on the same page, and are working on vastly increasing the size of the CMSB eco-system and developer community as we speak.  More users will mean more outside vendors.  One of our first steps in this direction is a free version (with "powered by" footer links)  of the product that anyone can try and use.  For more info on that check out the beta thread: http://www.interactivetools.com/forum/forum-posts.php?80564

Re: OO and code isolation - we're going to be rewriting the database code soon to support php 7 (we have to now that mysql has been dropped).  If you'd like to send me the latest version of your cmsb class and any requests around isolation I'd be happy to review those before we start on it.

PS: Feel free to email me any other suggestions, thanks!

Hi Greg

I've been using CMSB for years and have it installed on about 40 client sites.  It's easy to use, and what clients prefer with CMSB (them all moving away from Wordpress) is that the functionality side (ie, Admin) is hidden so they can't stuff it up.  WordPress has too many features visible and that causes chaos if clients are updating the sites themselves, and the page structuring is rather messy on WP.  Almost all clients run their sites independently once set up and they have been for years and find it VERY easy.  

One benefit of WP is the ready availability of plug ins that are mostly seamlessly integrated into the Admin panel.  That's a definite benefit, as I always use at least two others in conjunction with CMSB - Machform for their forms and payment gateway (and great automated response emails depending on what the visitor selected) and PHP Jabbers for their events software - and that requires 3 different logins.  In a perfect world...

However, the security issues with WP makes it a no-go zone for me.  Not worth the hassle.

Here's just some of the cmsb sites:

• http://www.trekdidi.com.au/
• http://www.geneticalliance.org.au/
• http://www.fordland.com.au/
• http://www.lightningmotorcycles.com.au/
• http://www.photographyspace.com.au/
• http://www.bochildrenshospital.org.au/
• http://www.alpineview.com.au/
• http://www.littlediggerspreschool.com.au/

Cheers

Carole

Would it help to know why I know many people who will not use CMSB?

• Easy shopping cart integration
• easy web form integration with things like departments
• the ability to do things like make edits to a large list of items without having to press "modify" and go into each item separately 100 times. Example: 1,000 items in CMSB. Checkbox 20 of those items to display on a webpage (have to click modify for each). Next day, change the 20 items that display. When the items have different features coming from other sections, you can't even search through them all. (Dave gave me a plugin that does this that I was very thankful for!) I also had an inline editing plugin made years ago for some of this. Eh, it needs work. I will need it soon. :) Imagine a salad restaurant with 10 locations that lists 10 fresh proteins per location page every morning. You would think you would go into an editor and run down a list, check, check, check, uncheck, etc. You can't. Also some might be checkboxes, some might be a drop selection list. Impossible in CMSB.

Those aren't really complaints but things I know people will need to go "mainstream" and attract more devs IMO. I assumed you didn't do the above so you could get more custom work. I'm certain you have chunks of code for shopping carts and such, ready to go. :p

Thanks for your feedback and suggestions, Rez.

I assumed you didn't do the above so you could get more custom work. I'm certain you have chunks of code for shopping carts and such, ready to go. :p

It's not that, it's just that it takes a lot to make simple software that balances being highly customizable with being instantly usable.  We actually do have a shopping cart plugin ready-to-go internally, but it still takes 10+ hours for our programmers to implement it.  So's not viable or useful for us to sell or distribute that yet.  We'll get there, though.

Cheers.

Makes sense. I think I sound more negative than I mean to btw. I was happy with custom work and thought it was just a business model as opposed to putting everything out there.

I dug around in someone's WordPress just yesterday. It was just one example but everything I saw there, I can do here. I did like a lot of the modern JS and ajax type of UI. What I saw made tinymce seem archaic and frustrating in a modern, responsive world. I always concluded that the fantastic IT team was hardcore backend coders, aiming to keep JS, CSS3 ect., front end stuff out of the equation. You can drag and drop the list items in CMSB but I'd love to see more happen that is useful. Not eye candy which I'm assuming you avoid and hate but actually high usability. 

Anyway, this is actually the opposite of what you asked for. Sorry about that and thanks for your work and support.

I am a professional UI/UX designer and focus on building highly customized solutions from scratch.

Hands-down CMSB:

1. ease of use
2. ease of administration
3. highly customizable
4. scalability
5. security
6. speed
7. flexibility
8. ability to power apps
9. economical
10. maintenance

I am building a yelp-like platform with the help of Greg, who has been amazing throughout the process and has created custom APIs that lets the app talk to the backend remotely, complete with Gamification such as badges, leaderboard and points tied to several types of user actions. I would not be able to design and build to custom specs with wordpress and expect the platform function the same way as it does with CMSB.