Alternatives to Wordpress?

[Lucky Luke]

Evening all,

I don't like Wordpress much for non-blog sites as it's a blogging platform with poor structure/menus for static pages. I don't like Concrete5 as it usually takes ages to load, Also, the latest version 5.7 is so different from 5.6 that you cannot roll forward from 5.6 to 5.7 (or whatever - it's an oddly run outfit from what I can tell.)

I have had a good look round and I like ProcessWire for a good content management system, but all the HTML, CSS and javascript is up to you. ProcessWire is the backend content management but not the frontend website.

RocketTheme make themes for Joomla, Wordpress, etc. They are now developing their own flatfile system called Grav. I like it, but the supplied themes have a in-house css that is really hard to decipher. There is a version that uses Bootstrap and I am messing around with this but it does look very bootstrap-ish.

Does anyone have any alternatives to Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal? Key features - good with static page structures and has a range of okay themes.

Thanks.

 

[DaveP]

If you're willing to learn, the best CMS is by far http://www.umbraco.com/

 

[TallBloke]

Have you heard of Ghost (ghost.org)? Or there's SquareSpace.com

 

[PoshTiger]

I always use Joomla, tons of components and templates around.

 

[Lucky Luke]

Thank you for the suggestions. I will look at each of those.

 

[Tricky1]

If you're willing to learn, the best CMS is by far http://www.umbraco.com/

I had a look Dave.. wanted to see a site using it, looked at two they were promoting, Take That and Henri Lloyd, one is now on Wordpress and the other is Magento..

 

[Oceanic]

I would really try and avoid Joomla, so much code and the thing is really hard to optimise from an SEO standpoint. What do you actually want the software for?

 

[Lucky Luke]

Information sites - static pages but I'd like good navigation menus and search.

I doubt if I'll get beyond 200 pages on the site - there really can't be that much to say!

Cheers

 

[tifosi]

I'd argue that you're just not using WordPress to it's fullest potential. The menu system is pretty good and can be extended through core functions and/or custom development to do pretty much whatever is needed.

WordPress search sucks. Always has, but there are alternatives including google custom search and plugins like relevanssi.

 

[Lucky Luke]

I'll revisit Wordpress. I don't like its baked-in blog structure and the weakness of getting static pages into categories, plug-in vulnerability (new plug-in trips old plug-ins, etc).

However, I'll give it another close look as it does have a legion of fans.

 

[tifosi]

I'll revisit Wordpress. I don't like it's baked-in blog structure and the weakness of getting static pages into categories

The blog structure is basically posts and categories/tags.

For info sites based on static pages you really need to be looking at custom post-types, taxonomies and post-meta data. It's the solution everything from woocommerce to event listings and image galleries use.

You can create post types for pretty much any information and set your own taxonomies to group them, and then custom fields for additional post-specific data. That's the real power of WordPress and its evolution to a CMS.

Stick to the better plugins with lots of recommendations and you shouldn't have a problem and only use a plugin if you really need it.