Are you looking for which cms is best for your website wordpress or concrete5, WordPress and Concrete5 are both content management systems (Content Management System), but if you don’t know what a Content Management System is, then you probably shouldn’t be reading this article.
wordpress concrete5 both are cms and used to create website
Difference between WordPress and Concrete5
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You must know benifits of wordpress and benifits of concrete5 if you know which cms is best for my website you must know how these cms works
A content management system is a software that assists in creation of content for websites and blogs, as well as managing and maintaining this content. Of course, it requires an administrator to actually do the management of the content. Both WordPress and Concrete5 are Content Management System’s as you might have deciphered already.
Having now clarified what we are talking about, let’s get down to the main topic. Between these two giants, which is the better option? Let’s line them up according to features.
WordPress is one of the most popular Content Management System’s and this is probably the first time you are hearing of Concrete5. Both are simple to use, but the simplicity differs from platform to platform, as well as the ease of achieving the same thing. Let’s begin with what will be seen when we get there.
Dashborad of both cms WordPress and Concrete5 Dashboard
WordPress Dashboard
wordpress
Concrete5 Dashboard
concerte5
From just looking at the two WordPress and Concrete5, it is way easy to tell that Concrete5 has a neat and simple dashboard where related items are grouped in clusters, making things easy to access. This could be way familiar with people who have used Cpanel at some point to manage their websites. It simplifies things as similar stuff are given a common heading, so in the case whereby there are many items, or you might be looking for some specific feature, looking at the heading would just be enough to decide whether or not your targeted item would be found in the group.
WordPress on the other side has a relatively more complex layout. Its item ‘headers’ are on the left unlike Concrete5 whose items are groups on the whole screen. The items on the dashboard are shown covering the whole page, but very different from what is found on the dashboard of Concrete5. The information found on the WordPress dashboard is rather analytical compared to Concrete5 which is more of a menu.
Whereas WordPress has a sliding menu on the left for its item list of what the admin could achieve, Concrete5 uses the whole dashboard to list these. Inasmuch as the WordPress Style provides them with a way to show more useful stuff at the very first moment on the dashboard, it comes at the cost of simplicity. In short, the WordPress dashboard is clever (and not everyone is clever), while Concrete5 dashboard is simple.
Both WordPress and Concrete5 User Base
WordPress enjoys a wide range of users from what you’d call absolute mediocre – you know, the person who neither knows anything about web development neither Content Management Systems and is what sure what WordPress was mad for – to advanced users who know every inch of WordPress, and know what they want to achieve what they want from WordPress as well as how to achieve it. This is what I mean, there are very many newbies on WordPress and there are also very many expert users of the same.
On the other hand, Concrete5 has the same spatial distribution of users as WordPress. However, as you expect, the users on the Concrete5 are fewer than those on WordPress for the simple reason that WordPress is way more popular than a Content Management System should be. However, this does not eliminate the chance that there are a lot of people on Concrete5 who know of WordPress but still choose to remain loyal to Concrete5.
WordPress does enjoy a larger user base than Concrete5 but immigrations are key. It is very likely to find a user open a new account on Concrete5 after using WordPress for quite a while. Reason being that the user would most likely have been introduced to Content Management Systems through WordPress when the user knew not the exact thing to look for in a Content Management System. But as time goes, the user gets to learn a lot. And as the user learns, the user gets to know of the weaknesses of WordPress and decides to seek if there’s a solution to these. The user may stumble across Concrete5 in a Google search or wherever, but they will come to the conclusion that Concrete5 is the thing for them. Or even the advanced user of WordPress decides to just roam the Content Management System world and opens a Concrete5 account just for the fun of it. Migrations may not really occur from Concrete5 to WordPress, because of the simple reasons stated above.
Administration and Security on both cms WordPress and Concrete5
Well, a content management system must have a way of creating content and securing it from the bad guys. As of the latest versions of both WordPress and Concrete5, there are a lot of noticeable administration tools. Both WordPress and Concrete5 offer a drag and drop content creation mechanism. This is not anything where there is any one of the Content Management Systems is ahead of the other. We may term the two as ‘at par’ with this content creation thing, though Concrete5 has customizable editor that one can choose the kind that one feels comfortable with. But it’s not like WordPressdoes not boast such a good editor though. Both editors are simple and straightforward.
For security in WordPress and Concrete5, WordPress keeps its security patch regularly updated to their latest most thought out protection mechanisms that try to secure their users and data generally. Not many users on WordPress have complained of their site or blogs getting compromised. On Concrete5, the security story is not any much different. The patches are well maintained and users seem generally satisfied with the content security provided by this platform. Again, both WordPress and Concrete5 can be termed to be ‘at part’ in this section of security.
Plugins and Add-ons in WordPress and Concrete5
All said and done, WordPress has a thing to boast about. Not just over Concrete5 but also over most other Content Management Systems. WordPress boasts the highest number of plugins and themes. The WordPress store is overloaded with plugins to achieve all kinds of things, themes to bring on all kinds of beautification and for customization to the website. Almost every featured of WordPress has a plugin that does it. In other words, WordPress is really over-reliant on plugins.
Concrete5 on the other side has a really small plugin store. Small compared to WordPress, but not too small for what users would need. Most of the features of WordPress that require plugins are natively incorporated into the Content Management System by default. Things like sitemap and file manager for example are readily found on Concrete5 while these require plugins on WordPress. This partly explains the large number of plugins on WordPress. However, these plugins are made by people who aim at making money. This is the reason why duplicates of the plugins are not too few, as very many plugins tend to have the same function. So basically, the very many plugins on WordPress do not give it an extra functionality as such. Most of the functionality is still achievable on Concrete5 directly or through code.
In both cms WordPress and Concrete5, Concrete5 has a smaller theme store compared to WordPress. However, there isn’t that much difference with the huge theme store of Wordpress. This is because any theme can be modified to look however the user desires. However, this may be tiresome, so some users go out of their way to port themes from other platform to Concrete5, but they would be happy in the end.
In other words, WordPress has the numbers. Be it plugins or themes, whereas Concrete5 is way way behind in numbers, but that does not render it useless. It does achieve the same functionality that requires plugins on WordPress, but this might take some clever crafting. This means that, although Concrete5 is not left too far behind, it may not provide a solution that easily accomplishes some tasks as WordPress does. To sum it all up, WordPress undoubtedly wins.
User Friendliness and General User Satisfaction in WordPress and Concrete5
While newbies would definitely find WordPress as a better and easier option given the chance to explore the two platforms parallel, a more advanced web developer is more likely to pick Concrete5, reason being that the advanced user would want to access functionality not only based on the fact that the service being provided by Concrete5 not only incorporates features of a typical Content Management System but also features found on the general web development platform. In other words, Concrete5 is not just dedicated to being a Content Management System, but also provides the deep tweaks that users who know how to use them smile at their screens when they remember how they used to accomplish the same task on WordPress.
This is not to say that Concrete5 is a better choice than WordPress. No. It all depends on the user and the level of expertise, and mostly what the user aims to achieve. For example, corporate websites with big flying banners on the top page, business websites with a separate blog page are all likely to be WordPress-made whereas personal websites as well as social stuff and online service providers are more likely to be found on Concrete5. That’s called spatial distribution of users.
None of the two Wordpress and Concrete5 Content Management Systems could be termed to be more user friendly than the other. Reason being that the user friendliness differs from user to user. There may not be any one definition of user friendliness. For my take, I’d think the most user friendly platform is one which provides the user with options on how they want to use the platform, how they want the platform to look as well as any extra functionality they want to incorporate into their platform.
This said, the user friendliness of the two platforms is totally dependent on the user experience. Here, none of the two platforms can be said to be ahead of the other. However, on my personal take, I find Concrete5 a more user friendly environment, because of its simplicity, whereas I find WordPress attractive due to its straightforward colour scheme. Again here, I’m personally unable to decide which one to choose as a more user friendly platform.
A shortlist of cons and pros of both Content Management Systems is as follow:
WordPress:
Pros:
Most popular Content Management System. Although popularity may not be such a pro, it really helps when it comes to seeking help. You know, people have posted tutorials on how to do some things on WordPress. This may not be the case with the other smaller Content Management Systems.
Very many third party plugins and themes that add functionality to the Content Management System. This allows the platform to be easily extensible and used for almost any purpose the use would dream, as well as customizing their website to look as unique as possible.
Cons:
Wordpress is highly reliant on plugins and third party extensions. This is to say that the platform in itself may not be as functional as Concrete5 when compared without plugins. This is a downside as it renders the Content Management System as incomplete.
Advanced users may find the abstraction too rigid as it may not openly allow users to tweak their things as much as they would want. Using the WordPress view may not be the only thing the user wants.
Concrete5:
Pros:
Very ideal balance between abstraction and customization. Few people would say that the abstraction here is too rigid, neither too loose for a Content Management System.
Many basic features of an ideal Content Management System are native on Concrete5 and do not require plugins to use them. I’m talking of things like Sitemap, File Manager etc.
Cons:
Seriously requires some more third-party resources. I mean, in as much as virtually anything is achievable on this platform, there is need for the third part plugins. Plugins add a fine line between a normal Content Management System and a website’s admin panel.
Customization is key, so some ready-made premium and free themes would do the platform a lot good. Probably something like WooThemes or Theme Forest things incorporated into Concrete5 would be largely satisfactory to the users.
The Bottom-line for WordPress and Concrete5
Finally, it’s time to decide who is king between the two. Is WordPress better than Concrete5? Or is it the other way round? Do you think there are features overlooked on any of the platforms? Well, that’s yours to decide. But if I were you, I would go with WordPress if I knew nothing, but if I knew something about web development, I’d seriously go for Concrete5.
