Concrete5
Concrete CMS started as a commercial offering in 2003, it has been through several revisions and updates, and version 5 brought it to open source. It’s a flexible system that has a nice backend, yet uses edit-in-place functionality.
Current Version: 5.4.0.5
Cost: Free
Development: Commercial
Source: Open Source
Hosting: Your Server, Their Server
License: MIT License
Programming: PHP, Python, XML
Database: MySQL
Our Impressions:
Concrete5 is best for non-programmers that want a static website. In other words, a finite set of Web pages like: About, Contact, Services, etc. The initial setup is extremely easy and creating custom templates (themes) is nearly as simple as creating the HTML files. Its real attraction may be inline editing of pages. All you need to do is click some content and a popup allows you to change its contents. It handles links, images, and all sorts of different “blocks” of content wonderfully.
Concrete5 was built from the ground up as a commercial CMS for actual clients. It was only recently that they released an open source version, so the community and custom module developers are still light. There may also be some security issues that have been brought up.
Helpful Links:
- Concrete5.org Explains what it is, and how to use it
- Get Concrete5 Hosting for Concrete5 that looks expensive
- Concrete5 Demo Sign up for a demo of the system
- Concrete The Studio Blog and company website for the people who created Concrete5
- c5mix tutorials, themes, tips & more
- Suggest a Link
Related Site News:
User Reviews: Submit Your Own
Voting has been open for this CMS since Thursday, January 1st, 2009. There are a total of 8 Reviews for this CMS. You can follow future reviews through the RSS feed if you'd like.
Review by Concrete 5 CMS: A Solid Review | Pixelita Designs July 17th, 2010 9:46 pm
Review by Presta May 22nd, 2010 9:27 am
Strengths: – Piece of cake to use – even my both proverbial and literal mother could use this!
– Easy templating
– Flexible (with limitations)
Weaknesses: – Community could be strongers
– While I have no problem with commercial modules, a few seem over priced.
Review by Tony Pollard May 15th, 2010 3:14 pm
Strengths: Easy enough for beginners to set up and use yet powerful enough for designers/developers to create someting unique. Community, addons and themes increasing rapidly. New, very detailed and dedicated documentation area but possibly most important, the clients love it!
Weaknesses: still a relatively small number of add ons, yet as I mentioned this is rapidly increasing. Errr, thats about it to be honest.
Review by Chad Cantrell February 15th, 2010 1:34 pm
Strengths: – inline editing
- stupid easy to use
- easy to create templates
- open development
- growing community
Weaknesses: – addons can be pricey
- not very socially integrated with usable community functions out of the box.
Review by Markus July 23rd, 2009 7:59 am
Strengths: – very easy to set up
- inline-editing
- great starter package, packed with all the basic blocks you might need
- great implementation of the marketplace (where you can get extensions and templates)
- translations available
- friendly community
- very useful version saving (for every single page)
Weaknesses: – limited amount of extensions, due to
- still rather small community
Review by NingboWeather May 6th, 2009 2:18 am
Strengths: – Probably the most intuitive CMS on the market today for end users
- Modifying or adding a page, doesn’t even need to open the control panel (!)
- Designing a page doesn’t need any knowledge of programming
- Automatic system allows to immediately go backward if modifications done were wrong
- Although still small, community is very friendly
Weaknesses: – Need even more guys to develop add-ons
Review by Dan April 8th, 2009 10:07 pm
Strengths: Very simple interface for the end user. Managing content is very logical and well thought through.
On the programmer’s side, the codebase is structured well, and the code is easy to trace through. Writing a custom module isn’t a huge task.
Templating is a breeze. You set up various areas of each page to be editable by the user. The user can then add various blocks of content (ie, html, gallery, form, etc) to each area.
It seems to be in active development. The latest release (5.3 at the time of writing) just came out, and 5.3.1 is already in the works.
Weaknesses: There aren’t a tonne of modules available (yet), and it is still a small community.
Review by Nathanael March 7th, 2009 7:41 am
Strengths: – Has a nice separation between page editing, and advanced features, such as settings.
- Good for editors that are not very technically minded.
Weaknesses: – Needs a blank database, can be frustrating if on a shared host.
- A little buggy in some browsers.
- Can be unfamiliar for those that are not used to in-page editing.
[...] Reviews of Concrete 5 at DesignResources.com [...]