Articles - Page 71

The Top 10 AI Tools for Small Business: From Automation to a Coordinated Team of AI Agents

matt-garrepy

DotNetNuke has become one of the most popular and formidable open source .NET contenders in the CMS market today and we recently had an opportunity to discuss a bit more about this company and their products with Navin Nagiah, CEO of the DotNetNuke Corporation.
CC: Can you tell us a bit about yourself and how you came to be with DotNetNuke?
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/dotnetnuke-corp-ceo-navin-nagiah-e1280177961566-100x100_oezy7u.jpg" />
NN: I am an Electrical Engineer by education. I have been an entrepreneurial executive for the last 16 years. I have been involved in three technology startups prior to DotNetNuke Corp.  Of the three, one had a good exit, one not so good, and the third, the jury is still out.  This is my fourth technology startup, and by far the one with the most potential.
Prior to DotNetNuke, I was the CEO of an open-source ECM Systems Integrator, where we did custom implementations of Plone, Alfresco and Liferay.  I was introduced to DotNetNuke by Larry Augustin. I really liked the founders of DotNetNuke, especially their passion and desire to ensure DotNetNuke left a strong imprint in the software industry.  In addition, the market opportunity was huge. I made the move to DotNetNuke, helped raise our Series A funding, and have been delighted with our progress since.
CC: Is this the first CMS project you've been involved in?
NN: This is the first CMS project in which I have been directly involved.  However, in my previous company, as a leading open source ECM system integrator, I watched the Plone, Alfresco and Liferay communities at close quarters.
CC: What was it about the DotNetNuke project that drove you to accept the position as CEO?
NN: The key factors for me were the passion of the founders to ensure DotNetNuke left a strong imprint in the software industry; the thriving community that is DotNetNuke; the massive adoption of the software; and, the size of the addressable market.
CC: What other activities does DotNetNuke Corporation partake in? Is there any involvement with other projects outside of the CMS arena?
NN: The company’s sole, razor sharp focus is on ensuring the success of DotNetNuke as a product, as a project, as a community, and as a company.
CC: What is your company's primary target market and why?
NN: Our primary target market is companies that have greater than 100 employees and for whom their DotNetNuke web site is mission critical or very important to the success of their organization. We sell to a broad range of industries, with no vertical market making up more than 15% of our total sales, with key markets that include government, education, financial services, and technology. Our customers are worldwide and use DotNetNuke for public web sites, extranets, intranets, and web applications. Our customers share a common need for a feature-rich, robust, stable, easy-to-use, and extensible WCM platform to build their web sites and web applications.
CC: What advantages does your platform offer?
NN: We provide all the features that excellent WCM solutions provide today such as a content approval workflow engine, granular user permissions within an extensive security model, extreme scalability, web controls using Telerik, document management, rich taxonomy and folksonomy systems, advanced support for Google Analytics, and distributed caching with web farm support. However, what makes us different and better is essentially two things:
Extensibility – The ability to plug-in and remove add-ons to your web site or web application quickly and inexpensively.
Our Vibrant Ecosystem – A vibrant and rich ecosystem of ISVs who provide thousands of commercially supported add-ons at a low cost, hundreds of System Integrators who can help you custom build your web site whether your requirements are simple or complex, and numerous hosting providers who specialize in hosting DotNetNuke.
CC: Why should people consider using DotNetNuke for their next project?
NN: For Microsoft shops (of which 46% of companies worldwide are according to Forrester Research) which are building a web site or web application on ASP.NET, DotNetNuke provides tremendous advantages. The reasons DotNetNuke is such a great solution include:
First, the product provides a feature-rich web site straight immediately upon installation and is easy to deploy and  maintain.
Second, even if you have features that are not available out-of-the-box, your first option is to buy commercially supported features for a few hundred dollars from the more than 8,000 software add-ons available on our online marketplace, Snowcovered.com.
Third, if your requirements are so complex that your specific feature is not available online, our WCM platform is also a rich web application framework with a published API that makes it easy for you to custom-build and plug-in your own add-ons to add features.
Fourth, some of our customers report up to a 600% reduction in development time using DotNetNuke versus developing a web site directly in .NET.
CC: What specific features does DotNetNuke have that separates it from other popular open source CMS products on the market today?
NN: We are the leader in the Microsoft .NET ecosystem.  We power over five times more web sites worldwide than the next biggest .NET based WCM product.  We have the largest and most vibrant open source community in the .NET ecosystem with nearly 800,000 registered members.
The big reason for our success is we are an extensible platform with more than 8,000 commercially supported add-ons that plug into our platform.  The add-ons are available on our marketplace, Snowcovered.com, and are commercially supported by the nearly 800 ISVs who developed them.  While, there are other add-ons on other stacks with extensibility, none come close to having 8,000 commercially supported add-ons on their platform.
In addition, we make it easy to plug-in and remove add-ons, essentially giving a user the ability to switch on and switch off features or change the appearance of their web site easily.
CC: Can you provide some examples of popular sites that are powered by your product?
NN: We currently power more than 600,000 web sites worldwide. One is the Australian Football League (AFL) which gets about 2.5 million unique visitors a month. DotNetNuke also powers the web site of The Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest tower and the web site for Microsoft’s Open Source Foundation, CodePlex.
Pfizer launched Robitussin using DotNetNuke and ARPA-E (Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy), a US Government agency funded to research and promote advanced energy technologies, uses DotNetNuke. The United Nations Public Administration Network is also built on DotNetNuke.
If your readers are interested in learning more about sites that use DotNetNuke, they can download case studies about ExactTarget, York County, Virginia, Lehigh County, Pennsylvania, and Green Resources by visiting the DotNetNuke case studies page. They may also be interested to see the winners of our Community Choice Awards, which include Rehab, The Silkroad Project, and Sake Social.
CC: Of the number of current installations of DotNetNuke, what percentage would you say are running on your Professional Edition?
NN: There are well over 2,000 installs of the Professional or Elite Editions of our product.  Given that this is just our second year of commercialization, our business traction has been phenomenal.
CC: What type of support offerings does DotNetNuke Corp. offer?
NN: We currently offer two versions of our product: the DotNetNuke Professional Edition, which comes with web-based support, and the DotNetNuke Elite Edition, which comes with both web-based and phone support.  More details are available at:
<a href="http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Products/EditionComparison.aspx">http://www.dotnetnuke.com/Products/EditionComparison.aspx</a>
These Editions also have product features such as a content approval workflow engine, more granular user permissions, a document management system, a developer license for Telerik RadControls for ASP.NET AJAX, and enhanced web farm support that are not available in the open source version of our product.
CC: We often find it interesting to hear about the different ways that the term “Content Management System” is defined by the people directly involved in the CMS market, how do you define a CMS?
NN: Linguistically, it means any system that helps you manage content – creating, storing, indexing, archiving, publishing, and distributing content.  I think both ECM (Enterprise Content Management) and WCM (Web Content Management) are content management systems.
There is a distinct difference between the two today.  ECM is what is internal to an organization. It is about managing information and processes inside a company. It is about document management and records management.
WCM is about managing the publishing and distribution of information.  In one sense, WCM is about revenue and ECM is about net profit or the bottom line.  WCM is about maximizing reach, while ECM is about internal process efficiency.
However, as people use web applications and portals for managing internal information such as document repositories and Web 2.0 tools such as wikis for collaboration and content creation, it is possible the lines between the two systems will blur over time.
CC: Of the various programming platforms available, what makes .NET the best choice in your opinion?
NN: .NET is the most mature, scalable enterprise development platform available. Microsoft has made a large investment to ensure they provide a complete solution stack including a rich programming API, a highly functional IDE, a database engine, a web server, and more. On other platforms it is common to have to source components in the development stack from multiple parties, resulting in greater integration challenges and life cycle support complications. Although the .NET framework is over a decade old now, Microsoft continues to innovate and enhance it with the latest industry development techniques and practices. We are especially excited to see the introduction of the WebMatrix beta which offers a great toolkit to get Microsoft web site developers up and productive quickly.
CC: What are the future plans for the DotNetNuke project?
NN: Our objective is to ensure that DotNetNuke remains the first choice as a web content management system and web application development framework for users and developers in the .NET ecosystem.
We are investing heavily in further enhancing the richness of our platform with more advanced features so we are attractive to both end users and developers.  We are making a big push in content localization to meet the needs of our users in Europe, Asia, and all areas of the world where multi-language support is critical.  We will also be adding features that are important for running larger and more critical web sites such as content staging, SharePoint integration, and enhanced management tools.
In addition, we will be making a strong play fairly soon in the cloud, in other words, providing on demand web sites and web applications.
Finally, we continue to work with Microsoft to further simplify the ‘install and deploy process’ of our application so we can attract users and developers from outside .NET to embrace DotNetNuke and the Microsoft stack. For example, we worked closely with them on the introduction of the Web Application Installer and the Web App Gallery to ease the download and installation of DotNetNuke.
CC: What can we come to expect from the next major version? Are there any major enhancements that are being worked on?
NN: You will see the next major version in a few weeks.  The major enhancements we are working on are in the areas of Content Staging and Content Localization.
CC: How can people contribute to the project should they choose to do so?
NN: There are many ways to contribute to the DotNetNuke project, depending on an individual’s skill set and interests. At the non-technical level there is always the ability to write documentation or provide assistance in the community discussion Forums. There is also the ability to provide content and feedback through the many community services offered such as blogs, issue tracker, feature request manager, or the open source Forge. For more technical individuals, they can submit an open source extension to our Forge, they can become a team member on an existing Forge project where they can contribute source code and development assistance, or they can develop and sell their own DotNetNuke add-ons on Snowcovered.com.
CC: Thank you for your time.
If you are interested in learning more about DotNetNuke, you can do so on their website: <a href="http://www.dotnetnuke.com">http://www.dotnetnuke.com</a>

Interview with DotNetNuke Corp. CEO Navin Nagiah

mike-johnston

Nibbleblog is a blog platform that uses XML databases as opposed to MySQL and others. It is small, weighing in at less than half a megabyte and easy to install with a simple 1 step installer. Today, I bring you my Nibbleblog Review.
Some of the main features of this blog engine include:
<ul>
<li>Video posting (for video blogs)</li>
<li>Multilanguage support</li>
<li>XML database, no MySQL or similar DBMS needed</li>
<li>Plug-in support</li>
<li>Template and themes support</li>
<li>WYSIWYG Editor ( elRTE http://elrte.org )</li>
<li>Simple file manager ( elFinder http://elrte.org/elfinder )</li>
<li>SEO Optimized</li>
<li>Open Source. Free under the GPL license</li>
</ul>
Not bad for less than a meg is it? Is it worth checking out? Read on to find out more.
The default look of the blog once installed is pretty good. You get a decent looking template with a single right sidebar ready to be customized for your needs. Heck, for the most part, you could probably get away with just using the template as is if you just wanted a quick and easy blog that's ready to go.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2011-02-26-at-11_18_37-am-580x372.png" alt="Nibbleblog Review" />
There aren't many options for available templates / themes available ( 3 total ) but for those who are willing to put a little bit of work into customizing (or just using one of the 3) this is not a major detractor.
The dashboard is very well put together and is snappy and responsive:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2011-02-26-at-11_18_56-am-580x313.png" alt="Nibbleblog Review" /> It's clean and easy to navigate with all of the options on one page.  Working from the top down, you get your content editing functions first.
Adding a post is easy to do with a resizable Wysiwyg editor:<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2011-02-26-at-11_19_52-am-580x376.png" alt="Nibbleblog Review" />
All of the typical options are available and work as expected. Overall, it was a pleasant experience to use this editor.
What I especially liked is the next option available.. Video blogging.
Adding a video post is very, very easy. Simply add the URL and the system goes out and grabs the description automatically.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2011-02-26-at-11_21_04-am-580x394.png" alt="Nibbleblog Review" />
You can of course modify these should you wish to do so. You can also add tags.
Here is what a published video post looks like with no modifications, just plug in the URL and publish:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2011-02-26-at-11_21_40-am-580x525.png" alt="Nibbleblog Review" />You also have the ability to modify your user profiles within the system as well, including adding your social network links:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2011-02-26-at-11_22_39-am-580x454.png" alt="Nibbleblog Review" />
Last but not least, the settings page allows for a good set of configuration options. In the top section, you will find the basic blog configuration.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2011-02-26-at-11_22_56-am-580x344.png" alt="Nibbleblog Review" />
The next are your more technical settings:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2011-02-26-at-11_23_05-am-580x306.png" alt="Nibbleblog Review" />
Next come permalink settings (including suggested htaccess rules, which is a handy option), comment options and theme selection.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2011-02-26-at-11_23_15-am-580x359.png" alt="Nibbleblog Review" />
Plugin management is well done with an easy drag and drop interface:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/screen-shot-2011-02-26-at-11_23_37-am-580x439.png" alt="Nibbleblog Review" />
<h3>Conclusion</h3>
After testing our their demo, I was impressed with the amount of functionality that is present in this tiny software package. Not only does it feel snappy and user friendly but it just works as one would expect.
I think this product is a great option for those looking for a quick and easy to setup blog. It would be nice to see more themes and plug ins but this only comes with the community expanding more.
If you are a developer, a curious user or just someone who wants a quick and easy to set up free blog alternative to traditional platforms, check out <a href="http://nibbleblog.com/">Nibbleblog</a>. I think you just might like it.

Nibbleblog Review

<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/writingtools.png" alt="improve your writing" />
You've heard it ad nauseum — content is king. Yes, it's still king. Every Internet factotum must also be a connoisseur of content. If you're not exactly feeling all Stephen King about your writing prowess, there's still hope. It comes in the form of seven outstanding web tools that can kick your writing up to the next notch. You may not be publishing a bestselling novel anytime soon, but, hey, Internet content trumps action thrillers any day.
<h2><a href="http://www.keybr.com/"> 1. Improve your typing speed with keybr.com </a></h2>
Hunt-and-peck techniques will slow your writing way down. The only way to focus on improving your typing speed is to concentrate on it. Keybr.com is the tool that allows you to monitor speed and progress. You will probably notice an improvement in your typing speed in just a few weeks of using the tool.
<h2><a href="http://onelook.com/"> 2. OneLook gives you that perfect word. </a></h2>
There are times when you're looking for just the right word for a particular instance. Not just any word will do. OneLook can probably guess what you're looking for. Just type in a wildcard search, and you'll come up with a list of possibilities. They claim to have indexed 19,500,236 words. I didn't even know that many words existed.
<h2><a href="http://docs.google.com/%E2%80%8E"> 3.  Google Docs for easy, fast, and solid content storage. </a></h2>
Chances are, you already using this king-of-all-cloud-based word processors. If nothing else, Google Drive and its integrated products provide a great online storage and collaboration site. Good Docs is extremely handy as word processors go. One of the best features? It's always saving your work as you go. No more letting loose with cries of anguish when your software goes poof, taking your literary genius to a cyber grave. Google Docs has your back.
<h2><a href="http://wordcounter.net/"> 4.  Count every word with WordCounter.net </a></h2>
Don't scoff at the simple. Several times during the course of a work day, I hop over to WordCounter.net. Since I am often creating meta tags and meta descriptions for SEO clients, I need to keep track of those 160-character limits. Also, most online writers are confined to word limits for article length. WordCounter gives you an instant word count, character count, sentence count, paragraph count, sentence length average, and keyword density. Brilliantly simple.
<h2><a href="http://www.articleformatter.com/"> 5.  Strip away anger-inducing formatting using Article Formatter. </a></h2>
This close cousin of WordCounter is also very handy. If you receive content from a variety of sources and want to paste it into your website or CMS, you've probably faced the frustration of carry-over formatting junk. More often than not, you can't simply copy/paste a Word doc into a WordPress editor template without putting some messy in your code. Article Formatter is in the business of stripping away those pesky bits and presenting you with copy/paste ready text. CTRL-V with confidence.
<h2><a href="http://evernote.com/"> 6.  Evernote – a digital brain for remembering everything. </a></h2>
Evernote's remarkable capabilities as a note-taking device need to be sung louder. I use this app on my Mac, iPhone, and iPad all the time. When I'm away from my own devices, I can just log onto Evernote's web server and access all the files that I've stored there — pictures, audio, text, Word docs, Excel spreadsheets, tables, video clips, and web pages. Its power for writers is that it can instantly tuck away those aha-moment article ideas, turns of phrase, or web pages that apply to an article you're researching. I seriously don't know how I did it before Evernote.
<h2><a href="http://bywordapp.com/"> 7. Focus better and become more creative with Byword. </a></h2>
Byword is quick and beautiful. Several notable writers, all Mac-users I must say, use this writing tool as their favored mode of creating content. Maybe it's something about the sleek design and delightful UI that serves as a catalyst for inspiration. Who knows?
Just reviewing these tools gets the writing juices flowing. Maybe the real solution to writer's block is to use one of these tools. Give it a try, and you'll probably find that content flows faster, swifter, and better than ever before.

7 Online Tools to Improve Your Writing

daniel-threlfall

Design agencies are in high demand, as just about everyone needs to maximize their digital footprints these days. But not everyone possesses the technical skills or composition know-how to create a visually stunning, intuitive, and search-visible site. This is where agencies come into play.
Fortunately for agencies and their clients, there are several web design platforms that make the task straightforward, efficient, and even (gasp) a good time.
The right site builder must also give agencies the flexibility to build and scale over time as well. So that limits the playing field.
WordPress is often the first tool that comes to mind. However, this platform can be unnecessarily complex, buggy and expensive. 
What most agencies need is a feature-rich, easy-to-use, powerful yet intuitive platform to work with. Choose one with too few features, and you’ll soon hit growth limitations; too many, and you’ll get dragged down by undue chaos and confusion. So let’s stick to the middle of the road.
To help you separate wheat from chaff, we are going to analyze three of today’s best website creation platforms. Hopefully, this will help you identify the one best suited for your growing agency’s needs.
<h2>Duda</h2>
Like many site creation suites, <a href="https://www.duda.co/">Duda</a> is a platform for creating fully optimized multi-screen websites. <a href="/duda-website-builder">Duda</a> is well-suited for small and medium-sized businesses, as this is their primary audience.
<a href="/duda-website-builder">Duda</a> offers a myriad of beautifully-designed templates, a drag-and-drop interface, eCommerce options, and a plethora of elements for design agencies to work with for budding brands. And using Duda helps streamline site development. As the site puts it, “digital publishers on Duda average more than a 50% drop in website build times.”
This is a bold claim for agencies looking to optimize production and site turnaround times. And Duda has a lot to offer in this realm.
<iframe src="https://player.vimeo.com/video/286281912?dnt=1&amp;app_id=122963" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe>
Firstly, Duda’s white label options enable agencies to create a fully immersive, customized experience that screams of professionalism. This includes compelling options for custom login screens, custom color and logo implementation features, and other branding options. Duda also offers user migration and “content injection” options to help migrate existing sites over to its platform. It also features one-of-a-kind templates that can be automatically pre-populated with clients’ business information.
On the communications front, Duda’s white label features provide automatic email generation components that present clients with site stats, analytics, and onboarding instructions for their accounts. Additionally, the content collection form makes it easy to send clients data sheets that include instructions on how they can send exactly what is required to build a stunning website.
What helps makes Duda a premier option for agencies is its rich team collaboration and client management options. Through this builder, users can generate unique dashboards for clients, enabling varying roles and permission levels based on their technical prowess; this includes potential access to publishing and editing permissions, eCommerce enablement, developer access, and more.
<a name="_GoBack"></a> What is particularly outstanding is that Duda supplies agencies with a custom widget builder. This enables brands to not only integrate third-party services, but to build unique, native widgets for clients. This feature can help agencies provide massive customization value to client builds.
And of course, Duda has developer capabilities for HTML/CSS/JavaScript integration, automatic SSL certification (for white label dashboards), and gives a remarkable amount freedom of freedom for SEO optimization.
<h2>Squarespace</h2>
<a href="https://www.squarespace.com/">Squarespace</a> is one of the more popular website builders on the market today, and with good reason.
Like Duda, Squarespace features stunning, mobile-responsive templates that are eye-catching and polished. 
This platform gives users various styling options to help customize websites and give them a more branded look. Like the previous platform, Squarespace enables users to tailor their site’s appearance without having to dive into coding languages; this greatly simplifies the processes for designers. Though, if a client requires it, coding can be applied for a more customized destination.
When compared to Duda, however, Squarespace is less intuitive; this can slow things down and cause frustration. 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/squarespace_zlovtc.png" />
Squarespace is lacking in scalability, and SEO is minimal too. Furthermore, integration features for Google Analytics and Search Console, Facebook retargeting, and other necessary marketing elements are hidden within the platform’s Advanced Settings and need to be added using the Code Injector tool. This isn’t exactly client or novice coder-friendly, but at least these features do exist.
When a brand expands their offerings, clients are likely to request the implementation a variety of third-party apps or extensions to enhance functionality. This is where the platform falls epically short of the mark as new features must be rolled out by Squarespace.
Another drawback for Squarespace is its responsiveness. While the site claims to tout fully responsive designs, the site’s contents can often shift when viewed on mobile devices. This means that users are likely to not have complete control over their sites’ appearance, which can certainly be problematic for agencies, as clients demand certain levels of uniformity and professionalism.
But Squarespace has a solid audience for many legitimate reasons. Functional, beautiful sites can be built in a small fraction of time, and updates, articles, images, videos and blogs are a synch to create and publish. 
The tool makes integration with other platforms like MailChimp, Gmail, Facebook, and oodles more marketing and social interfaces a snap – they know how to play well with others. It’s a very, very good option if ease and speed are your agency’s priorities.
<h2>Wix</h2>
<a href="https://www.wix.com/">Wix</a> is another popular option, but it has its own set of pros and cons too.
This platform boasts over 500 templates done by professional designers, making custom designs a breeze. These come pre-populated with content, meaning that designers merely need to replace the existing assets with their own materials. 
The platform’s drag-and-drop builder makes site assembly a snap. Wix also features a new AI-based system that will automatically create the first draft of a site for its users. 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/wix-1024x610.png" />
On the downside, Wix makes switching site designs a significant effort. If you opt for another design later down the road, you will need to re-insert your content all over again. It’s essential to feel certain about a template before diving in. This can be quite problematic for agencies seeking to optimize their efficiency as clients may want to apply a different template later in the process, ultimately creating a massive slow-down in production.
This also doesn’t lend to simplicity when a brand scales and needs to re-format a customer’s offerings. 
Wix is also not all that SEO friendly. This is the single most prevalent issue brought up by Wix users; there are many observations that SEO is not a strong suit, so it requires you have your own SEO expertise to ensure you are not forgotten by Google’s algorithms. Again, this can create significant problems for less technically-inclined clients. 
If you have your own SEO expertise, however, Wix can be a stellar option for newly-minted businesses and those who need a stunning site with intuitive versatility. 
The Verdict
You know what your agency really needs to get a sophisticated and impressive site up and running. Narrow your focus to these three excellent offerings and find the one that fulfills most of your business’s needs. 
Choose the one that will enable your company to turn professional websites around the fastest, and that will allow you to scale with minimal issues.

How to Choose the Best Website Building Platform for Your Agency

The latest beta of the upcoming WordPress 5.0 release is now available for testing.
The upcoming 5.0 release brings with it the terrible Gutenberg editor that Automattic feels they need to try to cram down the throats of WordPress users everywhere.
<figure class="wp-caption aligncenter"><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/gutenberg-3_nn5asp.png" /><figcaption>Fear the Gutenberg!</figcaption></figure>
This editor basically takes normal tasks that were / have been easy to perform and adds unnecessary extra steps in an attempt to make WordPress' editor look more like that of Squarespace (not that theirs is terrible but it's definitely not as easy as the existing WP one.
If you want to hear real world experiences with Gutenberg, just look at how many bad reviews are coming in daily over at the WordPress plugin database: <a href="https://wordpress.org/plugins/gutenberg/#reviews" target="_blank">https://wordpress.org/plugins/gutenberg/#reviews</a>
In a nutshell, it's full of bugs and really ticking off users:
<blockquote>If you type, you have to wait for ages just to see it appear on screen. 
If you delete, you have to wait at least 2 seconds for it to go away. 
If you highlight, you have to hold your mouse button down for like 5 seconds at the place you want to highlight to until the highlight actually appears so you can release.</blockquote>
The response from the Gutenberg team to this review was “it's a known bug” however this is just ONE of a huge number of complaints about the editor.
To perform a simple task such as using bold, what was once a single click process has been turned into a two to three click one, reducing productivity of users by a large margin for what should be a simple task.
To give you an idea, here's how the editor looks when editing a post:
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/screenshot_20181128_092915_mgn8wq.png" />
In the above example, I wanted to show you the process to get to bold. It shows up like this with a bunch of expandable categories and a search. Want to bold your text? Well to make that intuitive, we've made it harder for you to find the bold button! Now you get to search for it in a menu instead of just clicking on it.
Sense my annoyance in this post? That's the intention. I don't understand how a company so focused on ease of use and intuitiveness can stray so far from them.
<h2>Can you keep the classic editor?</h2>
Yes, you can. Thankfully the WP team is smart enough to include it as an installable plugin so that you don't have to be forced to use Gutenberg and for those who are currently on WordPress, I'd recommend installing and activating it now to prevent Gutenberg from taking over when WordPress 5.0 comes along.
For those who want to try this beast out, you can actually install the Gutenberg editor on your blog now (as a plugin) but I'm not sure why you'd want to do that. The best bet, test it in a dev environment  first and make your decision. Fortunately, you can still use the classic editor even when this 5.0 release hits so you won't be stranded in a desert full of frustration.
Wanna learn more? Go here: https://wordpress.org/news/2018/11/wordpress-5-0-release-candidate/
For those who are tired of this and want to just be able to write a blog post without the mess, try one of these great WordPress alternatives instead:
<ul>
<li><a href="https://write.as/">https://write.as/</a></li>
<li><a href="https://withknown.com/">https://withknown.com/</a></li>
<li><a href="https://ghost.org/">https://ghost.org/</a></li>
<li></li>
</ul>
Good luck out there!
~Mike

The first release candidate for WordPress 5.0 is now available (and sadly it brings Gutenberg with it).

Whether you’ve already been running your virtual store for some time, or are just getting started, your business efficiency is likely to be a constant top priority for you. There are many details in operational and sales management that can make it or break it. In this article, we cover some free and out of the box features of <a href="http://www.nopcommerce.com?utm_source=online-store-increased&amp;utm_medium=mainpage-link1&amp;utm_campaign=cmscritic">nopCommerce</a>, an open source ecommerce platform, that support both of the functional areas, and help increase your store efficiency with no investment required.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce-1.png" />
<h2>Inventory management functionality</h2>
Inventory management is one of the most important store efficiency factors. Too much stock locks your capital. Too little might cause missed opportunities for sales. Either way affects the customer experience.
nopCommerce inventory management tools helps in different ways: first, you can define whether or not to display stock availability and stock quantity on a product page, as well as to not show products at all if they are out of stock; this prevents customers from disappointment of buying items that are not available.
Second, you can set up notifications that will be sent to your customers when a product is back to stock; this ensures you don’t lose your potential shoppers.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce-2.png" />
Next, <a href="http://www.nopcommerce.com?utm_source=online-store-increased&amp;utm_medium=mainpage-link2&amp;utm_campaign=cmscritic">nopCommerce</a> allows merchants to track inventory in real time, which also prevents from oversells of sold out goods.
Some business owners prefer to use drop shipping, they don’t keep inventory on hand, instead, their suppliers hold and manage the inventory, pack and ship items. The nopCommerce platform supports such business model and provides opportunities for vendor management, including separate vendor admin panel where your partners can view and manage their orders, sales reports and more.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce3.png" />Besides the above mentioned features, the platform allows to track different product variants and stocks distributed across several locations.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce-4.png" /><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce-5.png" />
Inventory management helps to track and forecast sales, which means you avoid to keep too much or too little and can significantly enhance your store efficiency.
Various payment options
According to PAY.ON, the right mix of different payment methods can boost merchants’ sales by up to 40%, due to maximized conversions and reduced drop-outs. This is especially important for those who sell internationally, as payment options vary greatly country to country, and customers from all over the world have their own preferred payment systems.
nopCommerce supports several payment methods out of the box, such as, PayPal Standard and Direct, or Purchase Orders, as well as partners with the industry leading payment providers and supports leading payment gateways that can be found in nopCommerce <a href="http://www.nopcommerce.com/marketplace.aspx?utm_source=online-store-increased&amp;utm_medium=marketplace-link&amp;utm_campaign=cmscritic">marketplace</a>.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce-6.png" />
Note that for better customer experience, it is also recommended to display icons of the payment systems that you use on your page (for example, at the footer).
Shopping carts tracking and management
Current Shopping Carts list enables store owners to view all existing shopping carts of all customers and from all stores on one page. The list contains all products that were placed in carts, but not purchased. Information about these abandoned carts and their management can give additionally as much as 20% of a monthly revenue. There are can be different strategies to stimulate the customers that didn’t complete their purchases, such as gentle disincentivizing email reminders, or more pushy messages with time-limited special offers. nopCommerce platform allows to set up different message templates as well as discounts.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce-7.png" />
Marketing and sales tools
Online merchants have a broad toolkit at their disposal to increase shop efficiency by increasing sales and order values.
One of the effective practices is publishing special deals, bestsellers and new arrivals on your home page. Many online surfers don’t know what exactly they want or are not aware of new product models. Your goal as an online seller is to reach out to that segment and show the customers what they are missing out on.
Another good tactic for growing sales is cross-selling: suggest your customers something that compliments the product they are already interested in. This practice is not only beneficial for store owners, but may also significantly increase shopping experience. When a primary product requires complementary items, such as batteries, getting them in one go makes a customer free from hassle of looking for them once the product lacking them is delivered.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce-8.png" />Store owners can also boost customers loyalty and guarantee their repeated purchases by setting up a reward points program. A Reward points program allows customers to earn points for certain actions they take on a site. In nopCommerce, reward points can be used as one of the payment methods. This option is displayed in the Payment Method area of the checkout. Exchangeable reward points can be used together with other payment methods such as credit cards, gift cards and more.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce-9.png" />Most of the shoppers prefer to read product reviews before they make a decision whether to put their money into it. Reviews can make your potential customers more confident, so the more reviews you have, the more convinced a shopper will be in taking the final step. Reviews built trust in your store and your products, as well as increase a store’s online presence. Product reviews functionality in nopCommerce allows customers to leave ratings and comments, while store administrators may approve and delete the entries.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce-10945x0-is.png" />Conversion rates, hence a store efficiency, might also be improved by using different checkout page strategies. One of them is adding a gift wrap/message options. This might seem a “little thing”, however, it does not only add a personal touch and helps the shopper save time, but also adds to the order value. nopCommerce checkout attributes support a variety of checkout opportunities to complete purchase process in the best way.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce-11912x0-is.png" /><img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce-12.png" />Don’t forget about SEO to drive more traffic to your site. Check that your URLs have actual product and/or category names that are easily understood by your target audience, try to avoid including item numbers or category IDs in the URLs. Optimize your product description properly, it is not recommended to optimize your products for secondary details such as SKUs, colors or sizes, rather include brand names and model numbers in your title tags, meta descriptions, image alt tags and header tags.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/nopcommerce-13.png" />
Last, but definitely not the least important way to increase the efficiency is optimization of your marketing efforts by segmentation of your customers. Segmentation helps to aim your marketing at each particular group, which means saving you time and money, moreover you can focus your efforts on the most profitable customers. You can segment your audience based on location, personal profiles (e.g. age, gender, income, occupation, etc.), lifestyles, buying behaviour. Create different customer segments using customer roles functionality and set up tailored messages and campaigns for your groups.
—
<a href="http://www.nopcommerce.com?utm_source=online-store-increased&amp;utm_medium=mainpage-link3&amp;utm_campaign=cmscritic">nopCommerce</a> platform has many features to support a store operational and marketing efforts. When used properly, it can bring significant revenue hike and slashed operating costs. So if you’re looking to increase your online business efficiency, start by exploring all the possible ways to leverage the ecommerce platform’s in-built functionality.

Online store increased efficiency: nopCommerce features for smarter operations and marketing

<a href="http://www.adobe.com/" target="_blank">Adobe</a> has enhanced its marketing offering by releasing a totally free iOS app aimed at streamlining the creation of social graphics. They've called it, “<a href="https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1051937863" target="_blank">Adobe Post</a>“.
The app provides images and templates for marketers to “remix” and modify. That includes applying filters, adding text and experimenting with color combinations. It's ideal for designing promotional images for Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/tumblr_nzh2i3wqys1uks4puo1_1280.png" /> Although this isn't a direct addition to <a href="http://www.adobe.com/uk/marketing-cloud.html" target="_blank">Adobe's Marketing Cloud</a>. it will be a substantial enhancement to any marketing team looking to bolster their efforts on social media.
Here's a video to help you get to grips with Adobe Post.
<iframe src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/O9bH91A5YJY?feature=oembed" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>
<h2>Streamlining Social Graphic Creation</h2>
The Adobe Post home screen presents a range of templates made for social sharing, all of which are ready to be re-purposed. Adobe has promised to update existing designs, to keep things fresh.
Design Filters are a core feature of the app, acting as a combination of photo filter, typography, layout and colors; all of which come together to transform your current design into a new one in a single tap.
Furthermore, Adobe Post automatically suggests optimized color combinations. It extracts colors from your chosen background image and suggests variations that will look complimentary.
Adobe underlined the market which they're targeting with the release of this app <a href="http://blog.post.adobe.com/" target="_blank">via their blog announcement</a>:
<blockquote>
“This past year, we’ve been talking to many small businesses, non-profit organizations and entrepreneurs and the message is clear: consumers need a simple app to create professional looking graphics so they can better engage with their social media followers.
…We crafted and tailored Adobe Post so that anyone can stand out and communicate with impact.”
</blockquote>
I've already downloaded Adobe Post, and after some tinkering, I can confirm that it's pretty awesome. It allows even a one-man-band project to push out a professionally designed and totally customized social graphic within seconds.
It's going to help close the gap between the smallest and largest brands on social media platforms like Instagram, that's for sure.
For now, it seems only iOS users can reap the benefits of Adobe Post, although I doubt it will be too long before Android users get the same treatment.
The free app is available now <a href="https://itunes.apple.com/app/id1051937863">in the Apple store</a>. To find out more, check out the <a href="http://blog.post.adobe.com/" target="_blank">Adobe blog</a>.

Adobe Post: Adobe Empowers Marketers With Free Social Graphic App

The CMS Critic team –  otherwise known as Mike Johnston and myself – were recently in Basel, Switzerland for the <a href="http://www.magnolia-cms.com/conference.html" target="_blank">Magnolia Conference 2014</a>.
It was set to be Magnolia’s fifth annual conference, and as <a href="/magnolia-5.3-blends-cxm-with-cms-to-deliver-best-of-breed-software/" target="_blank">Magnolia 5.3</a> had just been unveiled, we were quite excited to see how things panned out.
Mike and I covered both days of the conference in detail. <a href="/day-one-of-magnolia-conference-2014-personalization-apps-a-roundtable/" target="_blank"> Day one</a> was focused on personalization, apps and a roundtable discussion, whilst <a href="/day-two-of-magnolia-conference-2014-the-unconference/" target="_blank"> day two</a> was all about the unconference.
On top of blog coverage, we also <a href="https://twitter.com/cmscritic" target="_blank">live-tweeted</a> the event from the ground.
Now though, I’d like to delve into the finer details of Magnolia Conference 2014. 
<h2>A Cutting-edge Reception &amp; Some Fine Food</h2>
On day one, attendees were welcomed to the conference by receiving their name tags, before being offered some food and drink, and an impressive Magnolia goody pack. 
 <img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/magnolia.png" alt="Magnolia Conference 2014" /> Included within the pack was everything from conference programs, to three-way USB cables to <a href="/day-two-of-magnolia-conference-2014-the-unconference/" target="_blank"> unconference cards</a>.  
 What got everybody excited though, was the Magnolia-branded Swiss Army Knife, which were also handed out at the reception. It was a cool, unique and memorable conference freebie which got everybody talking. 
 Somehow, the concept of an all-in-one gadget seemed to suit Magnolia's brand, especially when you consider their <a href="/magnolias-open-suite-approach-maximizing-choice-future-proofing-digital-investments/" target="_blank">open suite approach</a>.
<blockquote>
You can get cool stuff at conferences, but <a href="https://twitter.com/magnolia_cms"> @magnolia_cms </a> takes it to another level. Swiss Army Knife anyone? <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/mconf14?src=hash"> #mconf14 </a> <a href="http://t.co/ZirGz6XbdG"> pic.twitter.com/ZirGz6XbdG </a>
— Kaya Ismail (@EmployTheNet) <a href="https://twitter.com/EmployTheNet/statuses/481695871210639360"> June 25, 2014 </a>
</blockquote>
There was a friendly and bubbly vibe coming from both attendees and Magnolia officials throughout both days. It was a homely atmosphere, which definitely helped encourage attendees to move between tracks freely. 
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/14541403134_1cd2b18455_b700x0.jpg" alt="Magnolia Conference 2014" /> The online environment was great too. Attendees were joining in with the <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/mconf14?src=hash" target="_blank">#MConf14</a> hashtag, retweeting eachother, posting pictures and so forth. Activity on the hashtag was displayed on screens around the venue.
Now, Swiss Army Knife or no Swiss Army Knife, conference food can be a deal breaker. Thankfully though, Magnolia kept everybody well fed. 
 For lunch, a buffet was held in a separate location, not too far from the Pathe Theatre. Pasta, fish, lamb, potatoes and a wide range of desserts lined the buffet table. I certainly had no complaints. Later, at the Magnolia after-party, equally delicious finger foods were offered. 
 <img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/food.png" alt="Magnolia" /> Speaking of the after party, that too held up a pleasant atmosphere.  
Granted, the Church setting was – for lack of a better word – unorthodox. However, the presence of a bar along with a projector showing a live World Cup 2014 fixture quickly made everybody feel cosy. 
<h2>A Third Day of Activities</h2>
Many were under the impression that Magnolia Conference 2014 was a two-day event. Not so.
There was actually a third day of activities on offer for all who attended, completely free of charge.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/14356290189_78bbb8235c_b700x0.jpg" alt="Magnolia Conference 2014" /> Attendees could engage in Yoga, mountain biking, hiking and even a Basel scavenger hunt. Once again, this was a rather unique offering, and one I felt rounded off the entire event very nicely indeed. 
 Overall, I can only speak positively of what I saw from the Magnolia Conference 2014. The company's representatives were friendly, the venue was comfortable and the freebies on offer – including all the free activities – were nothing short of fantastic. 
Here's hoping Magnolia Conference 2015 is even better!

Magnolia Conference 2014: Reflections of an Attendee

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WordPress is, without a doubt, one of the most popular open source blog / CMS on the market but it suffers from several issues that make it less than ideal for complex or high traffic websites. For years, CMS Critic ran on WordPress and today, I'm going to pit our current CMS, <a target="_blank" href="http://www.processwire.com">ProcessWire </a>vs WordPress and explain why we made the switch and how things have changed.Before I get into this, however, I think its important to point out that a number of popular websites that previously used WordPress to help establish themselves as major brands, have since made the switch to different CMS. Take <a target="_blank" href="http://www.mashable.com">Mashable </a>for instance, one of the most popular websites in the world dropped WordPress in favor of a more custom solution.In a post over on Quora when asked if Mashable still ran on the WP platform, Chris Heald, Chief Architect @ Mashable stated:<blockquote>Mashable is now running on a custom technology stack. The public-facing bits are a Ruby on Rails backend, with a lot of the templating work pushed to the front-end with Handlebars and Backbone. We'll be doing a full writeup on the build in the near future.</blockquote>Now, this is just one example but there are many. Having said that, there are also plenty that are successfully making use of WordPress as their platform of choice and likely have no plans to switch. Each situation is unique. This isn't intended to be an “abandon ship for the end is nigh” post but rather to show another side of things. Sometimes the “WordPress is the best 3ver !!!?!?!” posts we see all over the Internet get a bit old and it becomes necessary to point out that it's not always the best option out there.Since our first site back in 2006, we ran on WordPress. I selected it for a number of reasons; it was easy to get up and running quickly with little effort, there were plenty of themes available for it and it was gaining in popularity which meant it would be easier to find support if needed. WordPress served us well for a number of years but we began to run into issues with the CMS that still plague it to this day. I'm going to break down the issues and address the differences in how things are handled between ProcessWire vs WordPress and why we prefer the former.<h2>Plugins – Getting rid of Bloat</h2>The #1 reason why we switched to ProcessWire from WordPress was bloat. Sadly, WordPress suffers from massive bloat issues that plague the CMS and cause countless headaches for those using the platform.What do I mean by bloat?WordPress; like a lot of CMS platforms; relies heavily on plugins for extra functionality over and above the core services. The main issue, however, is that these plugins are not actively vetted out (or tested) by core team members to ensure they use optimized code and are safe for your site. This means that by installing a plugin, you can bring down your whole site and cause yourself mountains of headaches all because you wanted to add some extra functionality.Sure, you can have an extra instance of your CMS in a development state (and you should) in order to work on it but the average joe isn't going to go install two instances of WordPress for their blog. They most likely will simply choose to install and assume everything will continue to work as it should. An assumption that should be realistic.Countless times when we were running on WP, we would have no idea that a plugin we installed broke some other functionality within our site until a user let us know. Let me tell you how embarassing it is to get an email from a user telling you your RSS feed is broken (and all because you wanted to add some fancy new widget to your sidebar).<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/processwire_vs_wordpress_-_overwhelmed.jpg" alt="processwire_vs_wordpress" />With ProcessWire, most of the capability we require is already present within the system and anything over and above this can be added quickly and easily. We took the approach of having the author of ProcessWire (the amazing <a target="_blank" href="http://www.linkedin.com/pub/ryan-cramer/0/414/292">Ryan Cramer </a>) adapt the system by modifying templates and teaching us how to best utilize the platform to function better than what we had with WordPress.What did we get by doing this?A sleek system that works as intended with code that works alongside the core and does not compromise anything along the way. Yes, it cost to have this developed but this is not something you can do with WordPress. You cannot go to Automattic and ask them to build in some new capabilities for your site. Their platform is developed for a huge user base and unless that whole user base wants something, it won't be built into the core CMS.Other frequent issues we encountered when running WP as our CMS was downtime thanks to our web hosts. We initially ran on HostGator when we first started but another frequent occurrence we would run into would be some rogue plugin causing a huge spike in memory usage which would then result in an email from HostGator support stating that due to memory or CPU load issues they've taken the site offline until I can figure out what is causing the spike. Picture yourself getting this email while trying to take your kids to the local Science Center. This happened to me quite frequently.Since moving from WordPress, I've never received this email again.Raise your hands if you are sick of updating your CMS and your plugins / themes every 2 days?I'm guessing a lot of you have your hands up and rightfully so. Nothing is more annoying than the constant need to update plugins daily (I'm talking to your WordPress SEO!). While it's great that the authors are constantly updating to resolve issues and add functionality, it distracts from the sole purpose of your site in the first place, to publish content .Furthermore, every time you update you are at risk of something breaking or causing a conflict with another plugin you have installed. Do you want to spend all of your time just trying to keep your site from breaking or do you want to get that article you've been thinking about and planning published for the world to see?Me, I'm for the latter.Don't get me wrong, it's great that there are people that work hard to constantly improve their product offerings by updating to resolve bugs and add features but do we need to update daily? The problem with the way things work here is that the end user typically has no idea if they need to update right away or if it can wait so they tend to update everything every time they see that there's a need. This simply compounds the opportunity for something to go wrong with a crash or conflict.Believe me when I tell you that the plugin developers don't work together to ensure their plugins don't conflict with one another. With ProcessWire, I know that when something hits the modules directory, Ryan has had a look at it (90% of the time) and made suggestions on improvements. This doesn't mean that crashes can't and won't happen but they are far less likely (and haven't happened yet since switching in May 2013 to ProcessWire).Caching for SpeedThe next issue is with caching, WordPress has lots of great caching plugins such as WP Super Cache, W3 Total Cache and many others and while they work great to a point, they suffer from the same issues that I spoke about earlier. They simply aren't vetted out to work reliably and they overwhelm users with options and prompts to buy upgrades.With ProcessWire, we have one plugin called ProcessWire ProCache that is installed, automatically enabled and simply does its job without annoying me with options or prompts to clear the cache. If I need to do so, I can turn it off or on and clear the cache with a simple checkbox but rarely do I ever need to touch it. Furthermore, our site loads far faster than it did in the past with a huge difference in response time over anything we had built with WordPress.Making the move to <a target="_blank" href="http://www.processwire.com">ProcessWire</a> was the best thing we've ever done. We have an amazingly good <a href="/products/">CMS directory </a>that was built specifically for our needs, our system is rarely down and if it is, it's because I broke something playing with code and not because of the CMS itself.As our writer, Kaya, will attest;<blockquote>“When CMS Critic made the switch to ProcessWire, it was the sheer speed of the system which struck me hardest. Whether you're creating, editing or deleting a post, ProcessWire just seems to snap into action a lot faster than any WordPress setup I've ever used – and I have used many.Furthermore, I've grown to prefer Processwire's interface over WordPress'. Post creation features like summary text, featured images, tags, etc, are all presented in a linear fashion, via toggle menus. It's all very clean and tidy. Paired together, the speed of Processwire along with its sleek interface makes the “ProcessWire vs WordPress” question well worth asking.”</blockquote>That's not to say that WordPress doesn't have its own place. It most certainly is the top blog platform out there and if you are looking for a quick way to put together a site based off of a host of themes that exist on the market, then WP is the way to go. When it comes to the requirements of a full fledged CMS (speed, simplicity, stability) then I would quickly dismiss WordPress as a viable option.I know for a fact that there are plenty of you who will disagree and that's great that you are experiencing success running WP in different environments but I will say that when I need something I can rely on, I will, in every instance, turn to <a target="_blank" href="http://www.processwire.com">ProcessWire</a> as my CMS of choice.What's your CMS of choice? Is it different than these? Do you have differing experiences? Feel free to let us know in the comments below.** Update 7/30/14 **I've noticed a few WP based bloggers have misinterpreted this article to mean that all publishers and bloggers should switch to Processwire because it's better at blogging. I'm not sure how this happened or why anyone would get that from this article but apparently a few people have so let me clarify a few things.<ol><li>I am not saying that Processwire is better for blogging than WordPress. That's ridiculous.</li><li>I am saying that WordPress has a number of inherent issues such as bloat and problems with the plugin directory (I've recently expanded on this <a href="/wordpress-joomla-and-drupal-are-not-the-best-cms/">here</a>) Anyone who disagrees with this point is simply arguing for the sake of doing so. There is no question that there are better alternatives and I've seen plenty of them. I can guarantee you I've tested more CMS than anyone out there and better options exist that do a better job of vetting out their plugins.</li><li>There are plenty of other great platforms out there for just writing. I'm sorry, WP may be the most popular but for straight up blogging, I am more of a fan of the more minimalistic options. I've provided a huge list of alternatives here: <a href="/minimalist-blogging-platforms/">Simple Blogging Platforms</a></li></ol>~ Mike

ProcessWire vs WordPress

When you launch a site, you will find that most bloggers and marketers will recommend you to use the WordPress Content Management System (CMS).
Although WordPress is the most widely used CMS it might not be the best option for you. There are several other systems like Joomla, <a href="https://www.weebly.com/">Weebly</a>, SquareSpace or Drupal that might be better suited for you.
So, to help you make the right decision I have written this simple guide that will help you determine if WordPress is the best CMS for you…
Your skill level:
The first thing you must assess while choosing a CMS is your skill level. If you haven’t got much experience with design or coding, <a href="https://wordpress.com/">WordPress</a> is probably the best option for you as it makes it easy to manage sites with easy to use themes and plugins. They are even third-party tools like <a href="https://coschedule.com/">CoSchedule</a> that let you manage your site better.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/wordpress-best-cms-for-you-1_okkejl.png" />
But the problem with WordPress is that all these short cuts through the use of plugins and easy to use themes will limit the amount of custom modifications you can make. Also, using too many plugins can affect the loading time of your site. Plugins can also lead to more security risks.
This is why if you have some experience with developing and are looking for a platform that makes it easy to create a custom site, <a href="https://www.drupal.org/">Drupal</a> would be a better option. This is because you develop Drupal sites with blocks. They let you create any type of site. Also, it offers better security than WordPress.
If you are looking for a platform that is in between WordPress and Drupal in terms of ease of use <a href="https://www.joomla.org/">Joomla</a> would be a better option. And if you are looking for a CMS that is even more easy to use than WordPress, <a href="https://www.squarespace.com/">SquareSpace</a> would be a better option.
But when you use a platform like SquareSpace, the number of customisations you can make will be more limited than on WordPress.
Your budget:
Another factor you should take into account while choosing your CMS is your budget. If you have a small budget WordPress is the more affordable option.
<a name="_GoBack"></a> For example, if you decide on running your site on WordPress and are looking for the <a href="https://hostadvice.com/hosting-services/wordpress/">best web hosting for WordPress</a>, it is going to be very affordable even if you choose a managed hosting or a dedicated server. This is because it is a popular open source CMS and many hosting services are battling it out to offer the most affordable service.
But on the other hand if you were looking for managed hosting for a site that runs on Drupal or Joomla it can work out expensive as fewer companies offer it.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/wordpress-best-cms-for-you-2-1024x469.png" />
The popularity of the WordPress CMS also makes it easy and affordable to find developers and virtual assistants to help run your site. You can also make many more modifications easily with the use of free and premium plugins.
On the other hand finding people to help modify your Drupal site can cost you more as there are fewer experienced Drupal developers. But they will be able to customise your site a lot better than a WordPress site.
So, if your budget is tight and you need a simple website, WordPress would be the best option. But if you want something unique and you have a high budget it would be better to choose Drupal.
The purpose of your website:
WordPress is a great option for running a simple basic site or blog. But it is not the best option for creating something more sophisticated like an ecommerce store or social media site or news site.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2021/07/wordpress-best-cms-for-you-3_yr07mb.png" />
<a href="/choosing-the-best-cms-as-the-foundation-for-your-e-commerce-site/">For creating an ecommerce store</a> it would be better to use a CMS like <a href="/shopify/">Shopify</a> or <a href="/bigcommerce/">BigCommerce</a> as they have been specifically created for this purpose. And they provide access to dozens of apps that can make setting up and running your ecommerce site a lot simpler.
For creating a social media site a better CMS would be Drupal and for creating a more sophisticated commercial blog or news site <a href="https://www.rebelmouse.com/">Rebel Mouse</a> would work best.
Now choose your best CMS. It doesn’t have to always be WordPress
WordPress might seem like the best CMS in the world because it is so widely used and is recommended by some of the top bloggers. But as you can see in this post it isn’t the best option for everyone. If you plan to set up a simple site or blog, WordPress can work well for you, but if you want to create something more sophisticated there are better content management systems.

Is WordPress the Best CMS for You?

Back in 2014, I published my <a href="/plushforums-review/">PlushForums Review</a>. The hosted forum solution was brand spanking new at the time, and yet it thoroughly impressed me.<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/vopggzde_200x0.png" />The startup project has evolved over the last year or so, with new features, capabilities, and styles emerging along the way.I recently sat down with Adrian Flitcroft, the Founder of PlushForums, at a popular London coffee spot. We spoke of Football (I refuse to call it “Soccer”), content management systems, startup culture, and of course, PlushForums.<h2>A Year of Expansion Ahead</h2>As we sipped our coffees, Adrian told me about how 2015 was all about fine-tuning the feature set of PlushForums.Back in April, <a href="/plushforums-undergoes-heavy-improvement/">automated rich links, CloudFlare support, and a variety of media embedding features were all introduced</a>. More recently, features like <a href="/plushforums-celebrates-one-year-on-the-market-with-slew-of-updates/">Mailchimp integration, localisation, Q&amp;A Mode, Akismet spam protection, and more, were all brought in</a>.With the year drawing to a close, Adrian seemed to be content with where his forum solution stood in terms of functionality.2016, he explained, was going to be a year of expansion.With localization now a part of the PlushForums project, Adrian is looking to get the entire platform translated into other languages, with German being top of the list. He also talked me through some of the demands coming from customers in areas such as Germany and France, who wish to have their servers located within their respective nations. A demand which PlushForums, he boasted, can now cater for.<h2>In Good Hands</h2>Essentially, I got the feeling that PlushForums was now well-rounded enough in terms of functionality to begin pushing its boundaries. Adrian certainly implied a broader focus on marketing and branding throughout 2016, and I'm quite excited to see how that turns out.I'm always eager to see startups evolve, and I'm happy to report that fourteen months after PlushForums first came to my attention, it's looking more promising than ever. Adrian Flitcroft himself is enthusiastic and driven when it comes to his project, and that's undoubtedly good news for PlushForums users.To find out more about PlushForums, <a target="_blank" href="https://plushforums.com/">check out their website</a>.

A Meeting With PlushForums Founder Adrian Flitcroft

<img title="WordPress Competition" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/wp-760x427.jpg" alt="WordPress-Competition" />
It is certainly no secret that the world of online content management is dominated by WordPress. Since its release in 2003, WordPress has grown to be the most popular content management system on the internet. In fact, 17.4% of all websites in existence use WordPress as their core CMS.
In terms of popularity amongst the elite, WordPress also fares the best. <a href="http://royal.pingdom.com/2012/04/11/wordpress-completely-dominates-top-100-blogs/" target="_blank">Pingdom</a> recently conducted a survey on the <a href="http://technorati.com/blogs/top100/" target="_blank">top 100 Blogs compiled by Technorati</a>, in order to analyse the diversity amongst their CMS. Unsurprisingly, WordPress was used by 48% of the listed blogs.
However, despite the dominance of WordPress over its rivals, it would be an injustice to ignore the presence and growth of the various CMS which make up the WordPress competition. Each one brings something unique to the table, and thus, each one has its own loyal fanbase.
So, which content management systems are currently forming the major WordPress competition?
<h2>Joomla</h2>
<img title="joomla" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/joomla.jpg" alt="joomla" />
Currently, WordPress' biggest foe in terms of sheer figures, is Joomla. The <a href="/wordpress-vs-joomla-a-perspective/" target="_blank">WordPress vs Joomla</a> debate has been raging for years, but the numbers never lie. WordPress boasts a 7.5million user base, whilst Joomla in the second most popular CMS, with a user base of just 1.8million.
Joomla is usually best suited to small to mid-sized websites. It looks good out of the box, and has a well structured GUI backend that offers plenty of features, and yet is still easy to learn.
The standard templates offered by Joomla are often preferred by businesses and websites offering products or services. The designs are sleek and professional, making it ideal for small to medium sized businesses.
However, the rigid, executive feel of Joomla websites, paired with a backend which doesn't match the simplicity or functionality of  WordPress, makes it unpopular with bloggers and first time web site owners.
<h2>Drupal</h2>
<img title="Drupal" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/blogger2-2.jpg" alt="drupal" />
In terms of numbers, Drupal pales in comparison to both WordPress and Joomla alike. With just a 520,000 user base, Drupal is relatively small time. However, after the release of Drupal 7 in 2011, <a href="http://trends.builtwith.com/cms/Drupal" target="_blank">those numbers certainly seem to be increasing</a>.
By nature, Drupal is slightly more complex than both WordPress and Joomla. Additionally, you will not find as many themes and templates, but the Drupal system is able to create almost anything via “modules”, which can be created, customized and optimized via the backend.
Generally speaking, Drupal is veered towards users who have past experience with web development, and who know exactly what they want from their website. Although you can do pretty much anything with Drupal, a lack of various first and third-party templates makes it difficult for most users to warm to – especially when WordPress and Joomla are offering an easier set up and design experience.
On the other hand, Drupal is renowned for its flexibility, thanks to the versatility of its module design system – which can create almost anything you want, in any way you want.
<h2>Blogger</h2>
<img title="Blogger" src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/blogger2-1.jpg" alt="blogger" /> 
Third on the WordPress competition list is Google's Blogger platform. Blogger boasts a relatively modest user base of 280,000, yet is extremely popular with first time bloggers. For individuals looking to start a personal blog or small writing platform, the choice is often between both WordPress and Blogger.
Blogger's strengths lie in its simplicity. A blogging novice can get a blog up and running just as quickly as any expert. The drag and drop design features also make it easy to customize, allowing the user to spend less time designing, and more time blogging.
However, much like Drupal, Blogger lacks variety found within WordPress when it comes to themes and templates. The layout limitations imposed by Blogger maim any creativity. Joomla, WordPress and Drupal websites can be designed to a degree which makes it difficult for most people to guess the CMS behind the site. Unfortunately, a Blogger website is easily distinguishable thanks their all too familiar layouts.
Overall, Blogger's name is a befitting one. The platform is ideal for begginers looking to start up personal blogs, but users looking to excel in the blogging and business world often steer clear.
<h2>Niche Success for the Rest</h2>
Naturally, the content management systems mentioned above are accompanied by a host of others, each with relatively smaller slices of the CMS cake.
Although WordPress is the most comprehensive CMS around, its competition has made no mistake when it comes to appealing to different, more specific audiences. For example, for those looking for the best <a href="/top-8-website-builders-for-photography-websites/" target="_blank">CMS for Photographers</a>, systems such as SquareSpace and Zenfolio offer a more image based themes, which are perfect for online portfolios.
So far, the three major competitors – Joomla, Drupal and Blogger, have successfully secured their places within the sphere of content management. However, as some of the statistics show, their futures remain uncertain in the face of steady WordPress growth, and the emergence of more niche driven content management systems.

Which CMS make up the WordPress Competition?

Content management vendor, Ingeniux, has announced a significant new upgrade of their social collaboration platform, Cartella with their 4.0 release. Cartella comes in two editions, Intranet and Extranet.
Some of the key benefits that Cartella offers include:
<ul>
<li>Social Software Suite One application for blogs, documents, wikis, video, image sharing, and other social software tools. With Cartella you can make social content easy to manage and share without building new silos of information.</li>
<li>Business Ready Solutions Turnkey solutions for online communities, secure extranets, and read/write employee intranets. Use Cartella across your business to accelerate productivity and extend the reach of your brand.</li>
<li>Fast Time-to-Value Launch online communities and collaboration spaces in days to deliver immediate business value. Add Cartella to your existing websites or build new communities with custom themes, applications, and business processes.</li>
<li>Built for the Enterprise Authenticate users with single sign-on, permission people and workspaces, approve content with integrated workflow, connect Microsoft Sharepoint, file systems, and other repositories, and meet key compliance requirements. Cartella is the first solution to provide the ease of social software with the control of a true enterprise application.</li>
<li>Real-Time Analytics and Social Intelligence Use Cartella's built-in analytics to gain 24X7 insight into the performance, usage, behavior, engagement, and ROI of your online communities and business collaboration.</li>
<li>Groundbreaking “Microsoft .NET MVC” Architecture Cartella is built from the ground up with Microsoft .NET's new MVC technology. MVC redefines how .NET software may be developed and extended, making it web-friendly, easy to customize and integrate, and highly secure.</li>
</ul>
<h2>Ingeniux Intranet Edition</h2>
Ingeniux Intranet Edition offers some welcome features to those looking to launch employee directories, manage documents, create secure workgroups and collaboration, and turn content into conversations with forums, blogs, and comment moderation.
<img src="https://cmscritic.com/ms-content/uploads/2023/08/igx-cartella_profile_resize0-620x560.png" alt="Ingeniux Intranet Edition" />
 
Some of the features available in this edition include:
<ul>
<li>Departmental and group workspaces</li>
<li>Blogs</li>
<li>Document collaboration</li>
<li>Mobile access</li>
<li>Employee or member directory</li>
<li>Member profiles</li>
<li>Taxonomy and tagging</li>
<li>Enterprise search</li>
<li>Social networking</li>
<li>Status updates</li>
<li>User syncing with Active Directory, Salesforce.com, and Dynamics</li>
<li>Calendar</li>
<li>Photo gallery</li>
<li>Forum</li>
<li>Video</li>
<li>Surveys and polls</li>
<li>Time tracking</li>
</ul>
Find out more about <a href="http://www.ingeniux.com/portals-and-intranets/intranet-edition">Ingeniux Intranet Edition</a>.
<h2>Ingeniux Extranet Edition</h2>
Ingeniux Extranet Edition offers a wide variety of modules that can be used to create amazing out of the box experiences. It also incorporates integrations with Salesforce.com, Microsoft Dynamics and Active Directory.
Some of the features available include:
<ul>
<li>Blogs</li>
<li>Document management</li>
<li>Digital asset management</li>
<li>Profiles and directories</li>
<li>Galleries</li>
<li>Video</li>
<li>Forums</li>
<li>Polls and surveys</li>
<li>Project time tracking</li>
<li>Calendars</li>
<li>Other tools and solutions</li>
</ul>
Find out more about <a href="http://www.ingeniux.com/portals-and-intranets/extranet-edition">Ingeniux Extranet Edition</a>.

Ingeniux Updates their Social Collaboration Platform, Cartella to Version 4

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