What is concrete5 for?
When you SHOULD use concrete5
Look, we had the balls to put a page saying what c5 was bad at on here, so here's what it's perfect for:
- Any marketing focused site.
- Any school site.
- Any business informational website.
- Any personal site that isn't JUST a blog.
- Any non-profit, club, organization site.
- Any news site.
- Any sports site.
- Many online communities.
- Many extranets/intranets.
See some real examples in our concrete5 showcase.
When should you NOT use concrete5
Ask any chef how to cook the perfect meal, and of course you're going to hear about their own kitchen and secret sauce. We're no different, but we also recognize sometimes you're simply talking about a completely different cuisine. We’re honest enough to tell you when using concrete5 might not make sense.
Is it a website with CMS needs, or is it an application?
concrete5 is an amazing way to manage the content on a website. It provides a robust framework for adding interactive functionality; in no way is concrete5 "light weight". But it might not be the best choice to build the next Twitter.com or a secure banking app from scratch.
Is it JUST a blog?
If you’re just publishing a blog, and that’s all it’s ever going to be, then why bother with a CMS at all? There are many tools specifically for blog workflow, so it doesn’t make sense to use concrete5 for a blog, because it’s designed to do so much more.
Now if blogging is PART of what the website encompasses, and particularly if you think there might be the need to migrate content in and out of the blog to the rest of the website, concrete5 is a great choice.
Is it a big ugly store?
The eCommerce add-on for concrete5 is super flexible and you can build online stores that few other systems can support. That being said, if you've got thousands of products and are more interested in integrating with QuickBooks than you are making your whole site look "just so" - check out Magento or something else geared to enterprise level eCommerce.
Is it just one big Flash movie?
Well if you really WANT to do that, you could very well be at odds with our idea of how content management should work. We believe great websites are places that change over time – not TV commercials made to look perfect but never change. A site builder has one vision, while a site owner takes that vision and runs with it, as they realize they could add a survey here and a guestbook there. While, yes, we have built more of our share of Flash sites out of concrete5, and it's certainly not hard to pipe the contents of a block area out via XML to Flash, one's gotta ask who is actually going to bother using the CMS to update the site when that time comes. If only developers will touch the site, why not stick with static XML files and go home early?
That's about it. concrete5 is perfect for EVERYTHING else. ;)
