My experience about Concrete5 unfortunately stopped last year during summer time as I had too many options I could not deal with.
So I waited for Joomla 1.6, supposed to have a brand new category and pages system but until now nothing came…
Drupal is for sure a reference but I am not the one that can handle it. Too little time and coding knowledge. In between I also tested quite a few names like Modx,Vivvo, etc but could not really find what I was expecting.

So I came back to WordPress as they had since last autumn quite a few releases and spent a lot of times reading articles with tips while trying tons of plugins on my local site.
I must say WordPress has really progressed in the past 2 years but still remained very easy to manage.
And finally I uploaded the first pages of my new website about 2 weeks ago and I am quite pleased with WordPress. I think the guys overthere did a huge job although we always want more…

Coming back to Concrete5 needs to see what the developments will be and you are right Joe to point out that the community work is essential. It’s incredible the number of plugins and themes we can find with WordPress and this makes a huge difference as anyone can tune his WP site according to his need.

A few months ago I read an interview from Dries Buytaert saying that his goal for the years to come was to make Drupal easier and easier on the back end side in order to be accessible by all.
So I guess we are going on the right direction and in a few years we will even have more choice…Isn’t life beautiful?

Cheers!
Jamy

The issue is not that I’m offended that they picked on my CMS of choice (I’m not), but that they are insisting on defining themselves as “not Drupal, Joomla, or WordPress.” Will this get you some traffic? Sure. But will it work as a long term strategy for attracting more developers to their platform? I don’t think so. And don’t try to tell me they aren’t trying to attract developers.

I think there’s plenty of room and plenty yet to be done in the CMS market. Unfortunately, concrete5 is spending a great deal of energy explaining what they aren’t instead of explaining what they are. They’re like the politicians that campaign on “not being the other guy.” Once the guy gets into office, people start seeing the character flaws and complaining just as loudly as before.

I was excited about this software until I saw their marketing and tried to install it. There’s a very perceptible vibe of “we’re the experts, you’re the users” from the very get-go. Not a good one to send out if you’re trying to build a community around your product. And seeing as this blog post is PageRank 4 on Google for ‘concrete5′ eight months later, they obviously haven’t built that community.

Although it might sound offending for someone – it’s not but just informative. They pick up their customers where the are – searching for a better,lighter solution than the bloated Joomla and Drupal.

To say that Joomla! was designed “designed by and for developers” is quite incorrect. The project Joomla! originated from (Mambo) was designed for use by small organizations and business owners. Great pains have been taken so that you can set up an entire website without touching a line of PHP or HTML. This has been done to the point that you can go and install extensions through the admin interface without so much as firing up an FTP client.

As far a threads on the Joomla! forum go, thank you for answering questions! I have to admit that I haven’t spent time on there in a while, but every bit truly does help. It has grown quite substantially to over a quarter of a million users and 1.6 million threads. Statistically, the core developers are not going to see “how do I put this on the front page” question that’s already been answered three dozen times (although I have seen them patiently answer such questions). If you want to get to know some of the moderators and developers, I’ve found the Lounge to be a good place to talk.

In any event, I still think concrete5 has strong enough offerings that they don’t need to waste any time talking about the shortcomings of systems. While they may be young (as many would consider myself to be), this really isn’t an excuse for such a hubristic website.

I am the webmaster of a full website in HTML and have been looking since last year for an ‘accessible’ CMS. I recently discovered Concrete5. I am far from being a newbie in computers but I have no such time today to (re)study coding. I consider that general softwares and CMS in particular should be written for end users, the ones uploading content not (only) for developers.
I mean if we buy a car and want to tune it because we’re a mechanic expert/fan, that’s alright but cars can be run by anyone who has a permit and a minimum of experience.

Concerning CMS, like Drupal for example, I know that fantastic projects can be realized but when one already need to understand their vocabulary, you definitely understand what kind of user is targeted. I am sorry but terms like “node” and “taxonomy” are not the best choice except if some guys want to play it smart. At least Joomla simply call it “page” and “category” and I found it much easier to get a first result/page. Still a lot of time is needed/wasted to create categories, sections, etc…
WordPress is unquestionably the most accessible/popular but although a majority considers it today as a CMS, you can really feel that it was designed as a blogging tool. Excellent, friendly, easy with lots of help and thousands of themes…but mainly a blogging tool.

So in my desperate research I once typed in Google “easier than Drupal more sophisticated than WordPress” and surprise, I had on the first line result an article about Concrete5 published in ‘Bloggersbase’ (in fact a copy from an article written by Leyl Black from Concrete5).
Of course I immediately thought that I should investigate on it.
So yes you’re right, there’s no need to pointlessly push down competitors but write a few lines to position the product, why not?
At least they got me as a new user because they talked of the 2 other giants

By the way here is what is written in the “About” section of Concrete5: “Drupal and Joomla were designed by and for developers. Building and maintaining a site in Drupal or Joomla is far too complex and intimidating for a regular person…” Well honestly, I didn’t find these lines insulting but informative (and true) with a meaning of “If you want simpler, do try us” and that worked for me as I quickly downloaded Concrete5 and immediately had a try.

Finally concerning the “know-it-all attitude”, well this is not new in the web-tech kind of environment and forums, probably also related to the young age of guys there.
I remember posting quite often on Drupal and Joomla forums, not only for questions but also to give (right) answers to others. I never had a single word of recognition or anything like that except from newbies who were happy to have their problem solved. I mean you really feel that you’re a stranger amongst a community of developers and if you’re not asking about modifying a hundred lines in the core module, you probably won’t have a (serious) answer.
Considering a bit “regular” users as well as their ideas and needs is often optional. This might explain the tremendous success of WordPress, knowing that their users are mainly “regular”.

Nowadays whatever general product we’re talking about, it is clear that success goes with access and I feel this is clearly the goal of Concrete5. I am still trying the product with others to see which one really suits me best but what is for sure is that accessibility is for me a priority. I don’t think I am the only one over here and Concrete5 has strong advantages compared to others. Hope Concrete5 will remain in the years to come simple and easy as it is today and keep its originality, not to become just “another CMS”

Let me address where I still think you’re totally unnecessarily turning off potential developers and users of your platform:

“We recognize that we have just a few seconds of potential attention from someone choosing a CMS. It is really important we help them understand what makes concrete5 unique.”

And this is precisely my point: why are you wasting four paragraphs on your About page making vague criticisms about other content management systems? concrete5 has plenty to talk about without dragging in everyone else. You could be recruiting smart developers who understand the limitations of their current CMS of choice. But instead of talking about the benefits of the way you do inline editing, theming, and extensions; you’re annoyingly rehashing arguments we’ve all heard before.

We don’t have a page on the Joomla! site talking about why you should use it instead of Drupal. Likewise, Drupal doesn’t have a page comparing themselves to WordPress. Same goes for commercial CMSes like ExpressionEngine. There are already plenty of places where I can go to get banter about Joomla!, Drupal, and WordPress (including some local watering holes). When I go to your website, I want to hear about YOU.

Thanks so much for the honest review! I think you might look into the Page List block to get the summary list of content from other pages you’re looking for.

You’re right about our marketplace being smaller than Drupal or Joomla’s. This is obviously because we are quite new in comparison. Although to be frank – in the big picture we look at a marketplace that offers over 300 competing add-ons for something as basic as permissions to be less than helpful. We’re going to do everything we can to keep our marketplace a safe and sane place where you don’t have to be an advanced developer to augment your website.

Regarding our attitude. Ya know, there are literally thousands of content management systems out there. If we aren’t willing to say we’re better than the rest, who is gonna? We’re not making any claims that are untrue. We recognize that we have just a few seconds of potential attention from someone choosing a CMS. It is really important we help them understand what makes concrete5 unique. If you read through the rest of our about section you’ll see we’re just as frank about things that we DON’T think concrete5 is a great fit for, and in fact, we proudly use WordPress for our own Studio blog.

The reality is, out of the thousands of CMS’s out there only a handful deliver in-context editing. Of that handful, even fewer are open source and free, and of them, none are delivering the enterprise level features like advanced permissions and versioning that we do. We have nothing but respect for the people who have contributed their time and efforts to other projects. Certainly nothing we’ve ever said has been derogitory about the passion and people behind these. That being said, I (and thousands of others) believe we have a better approach. Surely open source doesn’t mean “don’t compete”..

Whatcha gonna do?