In today’s digital era, where websites have become the lifeline of businesses and bloggers alike, the choice of a Content Management System (CMS) can make or break your online presence. WordPress, known for its user-friendliness and extensive plugin library, has been a go-to choice for many. However, the release of WordPress 5.0 with the Gutenberg Editor raised questions and comparisons with another rising star in the CMS world – Craft CMS.
A Shift in the WordPress Landscape
The WordPress landscape, which has been evolving consistently, took a significant turn with the introduction of WordPress 5.0 and the Gutenberg Editor. WordPress powers over 43% of all websites on the internet. That’s a staggering number, showcasing its dominance in the CMS world
However, the Gutenberg Editor brought a new way of content creation to WordPress users. It aimed to simplify the process with a block-based approach, allowing users to build and customize content with ease. While this change was intended to make content creation more intuitive, it raised concerns among the WordPress community.
Craft CMS: A Rising Challenger
On the other side of the spectrum, Craft CMS has been gaining traction for its flexibility and developer-friendly features. Craft CMS offers a blank canvas for developers to create highly customized websites, making it a compelling choice for businesses and developers who require precise control over their websites.
Real-World Example
To illustrate this shift, consider the case of Jane, a small business owner running an online boutique clothing store. She had been using WordPress for years, enjoying its ease of use. However, when Gutenberg Editor was introduced, her routine changed.
Initially intrigued by the block-based approach for showcasing her clothing products, Jane faced a learning curve, leading to a temporary decrease in productivity. She had to invest hours in understanding the new system, affecting her ability to focus on her business.
Now, let’s look into the case of Mark, a blogger using Craft CMS for his technology blog. Mark appreciated Craft CMS for its developer-friendly approach and precise control over website design and functionality.
The transition to Craft CMS was seamless for Mark, allowing him to continue publishing tech articles without interruption. His blogging experience remained smooth and uninterrupted.
The Numbers Speak
Now, let’s explore some numbers to better understand this shift. WordPress 5.0 adoption faced initial challenges, with some users hesitating to upgrade due to concerns about compatibility and workflow disruptions. On the other hand, Craft CMS witnessed a steady rise in popularity, particularly among developers looking for a more robust platform.
Craft CMS and WordPress Adoption Rates
WordPress, as mentioned earlier, continues to dominate the CMS market with a staggering 43% market share.
Craft CMS, although not as widely adopted as WordPress, has been growing steadily and is becoming increasingly popular among developers and businesses.
Simplifying the Decision-Making Process
So, what should you choose for your website? In the end, everything comes down to your own requirements. Let’s break down the decision-making process further:
WordPress 5.0:
Pros:
Vast Community: WordPress boasts a massive community of users and developers, resulting in extensive plugin support and resources.
Simplicity: WordPress is known for its user-friendly interface, making it accessible to beginners.
Ecosystem: It offers a wide range of themes, plugins, and integrations.
Cons:
Learning Curve: The transition to Gutenberg may require some users to adapt to a new way of content creation.
Customization Limitations: While WordPress is highly customizable, Craft CMS offers more granular control over design and functionality.
Craft CMS:
Pros:
Flexibility: Craft CMS provides a blank canvas for developers, allowing for precise customization and control.
Developer-Friendly: Developers appreciate Craft CMS for its coding flexibility and robust features.
Performance: Craft CMS is known for its speed and performance, ideal for high-traffic websites.
Cons:
Smaller Community: Craft CMS has a smaller community compared to WordPress, resulting in fewer plugins and themes.
Your CMS Partner
In the world of CMS, one size doesn’t fit all. Whether you lean towards WordPress, Craft CMS, or any other platform, what matters most is choosing a solution that aligns with your goals.
At Galaxy Weblinks, we understand the nuances of WordPress, Craft CMS, and various other CMS options. We offer comprehensive CMS services, including WordPress Web Development and Craft CMS solutions, tailored to your unique requirements. Partner with us to navigate the CMS landscape effectively and make the right choice for your digital journey.
Building a WordPress website?
The WordPress community provides you with plenty of options.
You can either make an easy one using WordPress themes or a custom one using website builders.
A website builder is the most convenient way to make a personalised website. WordPress community provides you with a ton of free and paid builders as per your needs and levels of expertise.
Once you make up your mind on what you plan to do with your website, then you can chalk-out the structure and the elements that you’re going to need for the website to function.
After locking in your requirements, you can choose your website builder. We recommend using two of our recent favorites.
The interface of the Advanced Custom Fields is simple. It lets you create dynamic fields for individual elements of your website.
Installation and activation of ACF adds Custom Fields to your WordPress dashboard. From the Custom Fields menu you can take full control of your edit screen & custom field data.
The minimalistic interface of ACF can be mistaken for an under equipped website builder. You can make some of the most complex and powerful websites with ACF.
The best thing about ACF’s interface is that it doesn’t try to overwhelm you. It only shows the functions that you need.
ACF gives you the full control of your website right from header to footer. You can build individual elements of your website with custom fields. There are 25+ different field types to choose from, vis-a-vis. text, image, gallery and WYSIWYG editor.
These fields are dynamic. You can use them to give your client an easy way to update their website according to their liking.
It has a clean and modern interface which allows you to make basic layouts with ease. The interface lets you work on different elements of the website, right then and there.
Visual Composer has a floating window which pops up every time you’re trying to add or edit an element. The window is movable and resizable, you can place it anywhere if it’s obstructing your view.
Visual Composer gives you the best of both worlds with its backend and frontend editor. While building, you can easily choose from the ready-made layouts of landing page, call to action page, feature list, description page, service list or a product page. Adding elements in the website is also easy with the element window.
The drag and drop visuals come at a cost of short codes. Migrating to another website builder or uninstalling Visual Composer leaves short codes in the content, rendering it unreadable. Fixing these short codes is an another chore on its own.
Which one do we prefer over another, you ask?
Well it’s a tough choice but…ACF!
ACF and Visual Composer are serving two different audiences.
ACF is focused on developers. Visual Composer on the other hand targets the people with little to no knowledge of website development. In case of both the builders. the audiences don’t need to have an extensive coding knowledge.
Visual Composer focuses on making the website building experience as easy as it can be. Visual Composer is not made for complex websites it will only provide you with enough elements to get your website up and running.
Why ACF?
ACF does a commendable job with its active development and incredible support. The developers are constantly working to keep the plugin current.
The heavily themed interface of Visual Composer is slow. The floating window takes time to load the elements, and the builder shows glitches when you switch from frontend to backend.
Visual Composer is affordable for personal license but expensive for client work. ‘Advanced Custom Fields’ is more affordable and provides value for money.
Another thing that doesn’t work in Visual Composer’s favor is that the pre-sales service and overall support for Visual Composer is terrible.
It comes as no surprise that ACF has 900,000+ active installations compared to Visual Composer’s 500,000+.
You can save your time and money with theme-based websites but you might not get the exact thing you’re looking for. Themes are designed keeping a universal requirement in mind. Your unique requirement might not fit in those templates everytime. But, if you have unique requirements and want the best for your website, then website builder is the right bid.
Making custom websites is a hectic process. We can make that process easier. Our expert development team knows website builders like the back of their hands.
Hit us up here if you’re looking for WordPress development partners.
We are not saying that we do not like WordPress but old man has to move the order to pave way for new and what better than Craft CMS to do so.
The key difference is how both the CMSs approach development. WordPress is a have-it-all and pick what you need approach, while Craft is ripped to basics so that you have a blank slate to build what you need.
Craft CMS is minimalistic, it’s simple, it’s dynamic, and offers key features. In fact, our developers have chosen right and wrong enough times to pick a final side.
You might not believe us right away so here’s what made us a fan.
Fields in Craft
Craft is a boon if you love neat organization. With Custom Fields you can get second level of control over your content type. Different content types ask for different formatting and layouts. Custom Field lets you define those types.
Craft’s Custom Fields & Sections make it easier to manage different types of content while WordPress makes up for it using plugins like ACF (Advanced Custom Fields).
Matrix block model in Craft
Matrix is like Legos, you can use the building Blocks to create a desirable layout for your content. It is a fun way to create complex layouts with ease. The rearrangement of these blocks is even easier. The blocks can be rearranged with a simple drag and drop without affecting the code in the template. You can define field types in the blocks.
WordPress’ ACF plugin adopts heavily from the Matrix content blocks of Craft for custom layouts but it isn’t as efficient as the Matrix.
Live Preview in Craft
Craft’s Live Preview allows you to make changes in real time. You can see the changes as you make them. It splits the screen, showing you the changes in real time on one side of the screen while you make those changes in other.
Craft’s Live Preview lets you review the changes in real time while in WordPress you will have a separate tab open for every little change you make.
Sections in Craft
With Craft you can create different sections for different content types:
‘Single’ section for unique content requirement.
‘Channel’ section for streamlined content with an order.
‘Structure’ section for content type which follows a predefined structure.
As Homepages have unique content requirements, they’re made in the Single section. News and Case Studies need to be ordered by date so they are made in the Channel section while a page like Services needs a predefined structure which can be achieved in the Structure Section.
Craft completely focuses on Content Management and makes it easier for your users to consume content & design distinctively. WordPress on the other hand doesn’t have any such feature.
Localization in Craft
When in Rome, speak as Romans do. Because Craft conveniently lets you. Localization is a powerful Craft feature. It lets you present content on a website in a specific language to target specific audience. The feature proves to be very useful when your audience is of different nationalities. Localization can be achieved by setting up and enabling locales. You can simply switch to the desired locale from the sidebar of the edit entry section, even in a particular section.
Localization translates your page’s content according to your target audience. WordPress relies on heavy plugins that interrupt with the security too.
Relations in Craft
Craft’s relationship engine allows you to form relations between posts with entry fields. You can create relations within the entries. Make an entry field determine the field type and update the template code. Drag, Drop, done. It’s that easy in Craft.
Craft’s Relationship engine allows you to form relations between post types while in WordPress you will be creating a separate category and some PHP tweaks or a plugin.
One-Click Updates in Craft
Craft’s update feature is highly underestimated. It provides the critical updates vis-a-vis features, improvements, bug fixes, security enhancements, and plugins in a single easy-to-install package.
Whenever there is a new update in Craft, it will appear in the control panel as a notification badge. You can download the update just by clicking on the badge. Craft even takes the precautionary measure of taking a backup of your data before installing any update package. Pretty clever! Isn’t it?
You can just go through the brief about the bug fixes, security enhancements, and improvements which come with the package before actually installing the package.
Craft’s One-Click update feature literally updates everything in a single click while in WordPress you have to update every other element almost exclusively.
Security in Craft
Since Craft’s one-click update feature is so efficient, users don’t delay the most important part of keeping a CMS safe, Updates.
It’s just a matter of a click and Craft takes care of the rest.
Craft CMS provides freedom of customization, central update system, and state-of-the-art security, all at a one-time fee of $299. WordPress on the other hand is free, at least initially. For the added security — which is a necessity — you’ll have to pay up to $500/month.
Looking at the vulnerabilities that the dependency on plugins bring, Craft CMS does not only look like a safe bet but also a smart decision.
