I think the Concrete5 About page talks about the other systems, not only because it was moved OS later in the game, but potentially because it gets compared to the others quite often.

In my opinion I think Concrete5 takes a rational stance to it. Want a full fledged blogging system, go with Wordpress.

The other systems also have such a strong and large community (built over years) that they probably don't feel the need to defend or compare themselves.

Concrete5 is great, and we all know it. The hard part is getting those "diehards" from the other systems to believe it too. It's tough to leave something you love and are so familiar with.

You're right though, Concrete5 isn't the best option for all cases, and they'll be the first ones to tell you that.

Lucas is right.

We're in a crowded space with some very well established products that people compare us to. It'd be foolish of us to not help them make an accurate comparison.

I think feature charts are a bit silly as most CMS's do way too much and are too highly customizable to really be clear in a grid of checks. I think the stance we take on the about page is honest and accurate. concrete5 was built as a toolkit to make websites easy to edit. It's not a blog being used as a CMS (wordpress), and it's not a news site that turned into a CMS (mambo->joomla). We respect the site developer/site owner relationship and try to make decisions based on serving both sides of that equation well without letting the product get skewed towards one side or the other.

Hopefully that gets across in the about page. It was certainly never our intention to say "Drupal Sucks" and I don't believe we do.

The truth of the matter is this is the #1 question we get asked when presenting concrete5 to someone new.. "Why wouldn't I use drupal/wordpress/joomla". Shouldn't we take the experiences we have in the flesh and use that to guide our marketing materials?

there. look better?

just sanitized the about page to not mention any products by name but still talk about the sweet spot in the middle.

frankly I don't think it resonates with people who may have had frustrating experiences with other products as well, but hey - i don't want to come off as a meanie..

-frz

awww frz has a soft spot. Is it because its the holiday's?

Hah

I thought it was an interesting comparison is all.
Obviously you agreed it was harsh, otherwise you wouldn't have changed it.

Cool, I wasn't expecting that. Shows that community listens, that's great!

Personally I didn't think it was harsh at all. Wordpress is a great blog, but a crappy CMS - and I have never met a site /owner/ who told me "I just love using drupal to edit my website." Conversely, concrete5 is a junky blog platform and .. oh i dunno i don't really have much nice to say about drupal, do i? <chuckles>
I suppose I should work on that.
It's.... popular? ;)



That being said....

I have grown to recognize that it is very difficult to infer meaning and tone in written form at all, particularly online. The truth of the matter is I'm a very nice guy who puts his employees and family ahead of his own interests. While I can certainly be snarky in a conversation, its typically done with tongue firmly held in cheek, and I can take it as good as I can give it.

It's very frustrating to on the one hand try to create an elegant product which people seem to appreciate, and then on the other be judged as an egocentric totalitarian like this guy says:
http://bit.ly/gvTY34

From my prospective, we might argue that we're right first, but we've always been perfectly willing to admit when we're wrong. I've had an awful lot of bad ideas, as have we all. You've all seen a lot of improvements to concrete5 over the two years we've gone open source, and any number of them are straight up rethinks of things we had already done.

I just don't think that means every idea is a good one just because someone had it. I was raised to think outside of the box, but also to expect to defend my arguments and expect resistance. This whole culture of "gee you get a trophy for playing at all" bothers me as a parent. We're creating a society of mediocrity and pity party whiners that expect a pat on the back for putting their pants on in the morning. I'm going all crazy old man now and this really has nothing to do with this thread any more, but is rather my venting... So thanks for letting me do that! ;)

My apologies if anyone has ever thought anything else of us. Please do keep suggesting things that you think are off with the product and the community site. Ideally good ideas win, bad ones get tossed out, and while it may be a bumpy ride we all are heading to a better place together so it is worth while to have the debate.

Thanks for bringing the about page stuff up Jessica.
-frz

HAHA "I'm going all crazy old man"
No worries I work with all kinds of crazies!

I'm not going to go all cms crazy, as I just don't have the time.

At least we can agree on Drupal;)

Also

Next Post: Politics, Religion,and CMS:)

Also, Look into going tohttp://cmsexpo.net/
I'd be happy to help you get in touch with John. It's a pretty neat event.

We've thought about doing that but heard it was pretty much a Joomla thing.. no?

Joomla & Drupal have large audiences. ASP is going to be there this year. It's one of the most organized events I have ever been to. Unfortunately I will be at a different event in Holland during CMSEXPO, but I'm going to get in touch with the C5 Group in AMS:)

And seriously thank you again for listening. I did not expect the about page to get changed. If I would have posted that in a different community, that change wouldn't have been made that quickly.

Very impressive community. Thank you again.

Here is tweet that went out this morning :)

Is YOUR #CMS Represented At The 2011 CMS Expo yet? If not, contact us asap... | #cmsx

Thanks for posting your thoughts on this, Franz (and thanks for bringing it up, Jessica). While I agree that comparing C5 to other systems can be useful for some people, I think overall it is more detrimental, for two reasons:

1) It can come off sounding defensive.

2) Even if it's correct, it will push some people away -- because a lot of developers are kind of "bought in" to the platform they use (either emotionally or because they have so much time and experience invested), and anything that pokes holes in that worldview will make them not want to hear what you have to say with an open mind.

Like you said, it's really hard to gauge how people will react to what you write! I think you made a good decision here.

-Jordan