For the past few days, while just browsing the internet I have stumbled with this new flat CMS called Grav. I immediately played with it and discovered that they have a very good features.
I really loved it and amazed with how they built this CMS. At first, you’ll adjust on how they do things especially when you are used to a database-driven CMS such as WordPress. Try not to use this to your current project as it is still on development. Although they’ve already released their first version a few months ago.
Now, the question is why am I comparing this 2 different CMS knowing that they are different? There are few things that we can compare with this two. Just a disclaimer that I’ll just try to compare them based on my experience while using them to my projects and not the thorough comparison.
Below are the things that I want to compare:
- Setting up the CMS
Installing Grav is easy but not as easy as WordPress. There are few ways to install it as shown in their documentation. As long as you know how to use your command line for Composer command. Or do a manual installation by downloading their zip file. For Grav, you just need web server (Apache, Nginx, IIS, etc) and PHP unlike WordPress that requires you to have database (MySQL, etc).
Overall verdict, both of them were easy to setup. - Setting up templates
Both of them have templates that you can download. But of course WordPress has a lot of free templates that you can choose from different sites.Anyway, I’ve chosen this item as my second comparison because for me it means a lot to most of the developer if you are able to integrate any sliced HTML to any CMS templating. Doing templates on Grav is a bit difficult as you need to adjust from their templating engine. But learning their engine is really easy by the help of their awesome documentation as you don’t need to go to any sites to get other ways to do things. WordPress on the other hand, has the simplest steps of doing your theme. Just add few files and line of codes and your good to go.
Overall verdict, I think WordPress got my vote on this one. I still appreciate how Grav arrange their templating but you need to be patience to do it.
- Availability of useful add-ons or plugins
There is no doubt that in terms of how many numbers of useful plugins or add-ons WordPress has a lot of it. WordPress has been there for a long time and it is still the most used CMS out there and there is no question about that. However, things are changing and people try to invent new things to make their development easier. Many developers now are adopting it and starting to contribute useful plugins to it.Overall verdict, still WordPress win on this one.
I know there are a lot of flat CMS out there that I haven’t tried yet and hopefully I can get my hands on them soon.
If you have any comments or additional information just drop some below. Thanks!