Concrete5 vs. Wordpress

Sometimes we are asked how the Concrete5 content management system compares to other similar content managment systems like Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal. To put it unprofessionally, but honestly, all content management systems (CMS) suck. No content management system will work ideally for all websites and all tasks and by there very design they are limiting in what they will let you do and how they work. Once you understand that, then you can understand what content management system will work best for your particular needs.

We've worked with content management systems that are the $125,000 variety and the free open source variety like Concrete5 and in the end there often isn't a lot of difference between the two in many ways. The higher end ones in some cases can manage larger websites with more traffic but don't necessarily work any better than the free systems in many cases. Of the open source systems Concrete5 and Wordpress are two of our favorite to work with. They are more intuitive than Joomla and Drupal and in our opinion have a cleaner code base. Between Concrete5 and Wordpress we would go with Concrete5 in most cases.

Concrete5 started out as a true content management system. That is what it was originally built to do and in many ways it shows. Wordpress was originally made to be a blogging platform and similarly in many ways it shows. Wordpress has morphed itself towards becoming a true CMS but it still falls far short to Concrete5 in permissions and versioning functionality which are key elements in a CMS.

Reasons to Use Concrete5 on your website:

• More intuitive user interface. As simple to use as an iphone.
• Faster page load allowing for more site traffic and concurrent users on a website
• More functionality out of the box (more tools ready to use)
• Idea of blocks being changeable and unique and having multiple content blocks on a page (i.e. form block, image gallery block, content block, etc.)
• Ability to setup different users, different user groups and assign permissions right down to the block level on a page
• True page versioning functionality
• Ability to create unlimited types of page types
• Solid base code and add-ons from the Marketplace are reviewed before they are allowed into the marketplace so you don't see some of the junk code that developers that have been around for a while run into with Drupal and Joomla sites

Don't get us wrong. As we have said before we like Wordpress. Just not as much, in most cases, as Concrete5. Without question Wordpress is the best open source blogging tool available and if that is what you want use Wordpress. However, if you are looking for a little bit more, then use Concrete5 on your next website.

Want to learn more about Concrete5? Give us a call, drop us a note or post a comment below.