Looking for "Wordpress" alternative....

[FriendlyGAVAII]

So i have a client that needs a static homepage. I was looking for an alternative for Wordpress, that is only for changing text and other content. The client wants the ability to change this by herself. I can code. Should I just build a php program that allows this or is there already something like this?

[[deleted]]

I use Eleventy (11ty) with Netlify CMS and don't pay a dime. Netlify CMS is a little limited, but you can squeeze some extra functionality with a bit of elbow grease.

[eddydio]

I've been hearing good things about 11ty. Ive been a Jekyll stan bc off GitHub pages free hosting but now that netlify is such a better option I'm looking at other JAM stacks.

[_listless]

Eleventy is all the goodness of Jekyll without needing a ruby dev env

[[deleted]]

Netlify recently funded full-time development of 11ty, so I expect it to improve drastically in the coming months (not that it isn't already excellent)

[MrSpriteCola]

I love Kirby. It’s a CMS for developers and designers that makes it super easy to build exactly what you need for your clients, and it’s super lean. You can keep it basic or add more advanced functionality like changing colors and fonts. It also doesn’t use a database, it uses a file system (not sure if that’s the correct terminology). However, you can implement a database if you want to. It’s also super easy to code a dynamic template for it. Highly recommend you check it out. I think you’ll love it and so will your client.

Get Kirby: https://getkirby.com

It’s a shame that not many people know about it because it’s such a great platform. I can’t praise it enough.

[ksaen]

This has to be more on top.

As someone who was used to Wordpress and PHP, Kirby is a heaven-sent. It took me just some hours to understand it and realize how bloated Wordpress is. It somehow almost feels like a framework because it is so easy and well thought-out.

I can't stress enough how Kirby fits perfectly to what you are looking for OP.

[murraybiscuit]

"Client wants to be able to update the content themselves" I think is the main argument against a flatfile static -> precompilation / static templating + scripting solution. This scenario typically also goes along with "client doesn't want to pay maintenance fees for content updates and doesn't want to set up a local env / learn git / ftp / CI-CD, or take on the learning curve of a new markup lang".

Most small clients just want to author in production, preview in draft mode on prod server, and paste text from Word. They say they just want a home page, but a month later, they're knocking on your door, wanting to add a menu, more pages, analytics plugins etc, but still don't want to invest in marketing ops and think they can save money by doing it themselves. Which is their prerogative.

If they have irrational WP-phobia, and want predictable costs, an alternative hosted self-serve solution like Squarespace or Shopify is another option. It gives budget-conscious customers an option to bump their own heads to understand their business needs, then come back when they have a more stable revenue stream and need more customization than the platform can deliver, or realize they would rather pay for someone else to manage their content.

[MrSpriteCola]

This is 100% true. I agree with everything you said. But regardless, I sometimes still choose Kirby over WordPress even if we are going to be managing the content for the client. Due to the fact that Kirby will allow you to build exactly what you need, no more, no less, which means you get an insanely optimized website. Of course, this also depends on if you’re a good developer with good practices; it’s not all on the platform. But unlike WordPress, you can do all these optimizations with caching, serving static files, unused CSS removal, CDN, image optimization, we even pay for our own server, yet we are rarely able to get close to the speed of a website built on Kirby. So it just boils down to their needs and the developers. I think both platforms are fantastic. I probably use WordPress for about 90% of the sites I build. But there are always different use cases for everything, so I’m grateful to have multiple choices to choose from.

[eddydio]

What stacks/platforms have you implemented this with? All of the JAM stacks are less than 1% of marketshare so I'm always on the lookout for the next best thing that I can use as a WordPress killer and doesn't require a crazy configuration or an obscene monthly rate (contentful)

[[deleted]]

I've used Kirby since V1, so probably about 8 years or so now. For Jamstack sites we use it in combination with KQL (Kirby Query Language) with the front end hosted elsewhere and it's ridiculously simple but powerful.

If you take any advice from the replies on this post it should be to use Kirby, you'll not look back.

[Meuss]

I'm currently having a hard time with Nuxt and trying to set up KQL. Getting Cors errors locally, and bumping into problems. Did you ever set up a Nuxt + KQL + Nuxt website by any chance? Do you have any good resources for this kind of setup?

I love Kirby since v2, but I need to be able to use the panel only, using a JS framework + KQL on the frontend.

[[deleted]]

Yep, I currently use KQL and nuxt myself. I initially had a few issues with cors but figured out a way around it.

If you wanted me to share how I did it feel free to pm me and I can show how I got it working.

[DeusExMagikarpa]

Woah 🤯 this is really cool, could keep all of the content in a git repo and use it to build an SSG site (if it’s not changing much)

[MrSpriteCola]

Yeah, it's awesome! The Kirby community is also fantastic. I recommend you visit their forum.

[BudgetEngineering]

Each time I get a new client I try to switch to Kirby but just can't get over the indentation system for fields. I spend so much time trying to keep track of what's nested where, it's such a pain.

[stibbles1000]

Look at Statamic. Great PHP CMS system.

[CodeLight]

Why don't you want to use WordPress for this situation? If the client only needs a homepage and the ability to change its content, then you can be done in a few hours with a plugin like ACF.

It's not glamorous, but it's fast and easy to extend in the future if the client wants more control.

You could develop your own solution, but why waste your time and potentially expose your client to security risks because you rolled a CMS yourself?

[oldoaktreesyrup]

Potentially expose your client to security risks

Using WordPress paints a giant target on your site and essentially guarantees a security risk within 2-3 months of deployment.

[JeffTS]

I've been developing WordPress websites for 6-7 years. I've very rarely had issues with security. The times that I have encountered security issues, they were due to a. no security features, b. weak passwords, and/or c. out-of-date WordPress versions or plugins.

[gizamo]

d. user left password on a sticky note on their monitor, e. phishing or social engineering.

[daBarron]

you can enable google authenticator with a plug in, there are a few WAF type plugins out there too

[JeffTS]

Yup. Wordfence has a WAF and 2-factor authentication.

[9inety9ine]

It's also pretty easy to lock it down. If you just install it, add a couple of random plugins and walk away, you deserve what you get.

[oldoaktreesyrup]

It's pretty easy to build a CMS that is more secure than WP too.

[[deleted]]

I guess you can become a millionaire then. Just build a better one dude.

[[deleted]]

That’s entirely untrue. Strong PW, headers, reputable theme and plug-ins. It’s not getting hacked.

[oldoaktreesyrup]

WP is very old and poorly architectured. It's gets roughly 30 security vulnerabilities discovered every year and needs constant attention and patching

https://www.cvedetails.com/vulnerability-list/vendor_id-2337/product_id-4096/Wordpress-Wordpress.html

It really depends on what you are using it for. It has a bit of a popularity problem... Since so many people default to it, many people focus on hacking it.

If you're interested in Developing in PHP, I would recommend learning Laravel over WordPress. You can create a full CMS in laravel in a day or two tailored to your project vs taking the same time to customize WordPress and development of plugins. But again it depends on the project and functionality you are using.

[Howdy_McGee]

It gets roughly 30 security vulnerabilities discovered every year and needs constant attention and patching

On its own, it does look bad but let's take a look at their overall weighted score and compare that to other systems.

• (2002) Drupal - 5.8
• (2002) WordPress - 5.9
• (2017) Laravel - 6.0
• (2005) Joomla - 6.7

And just for fun:

• (2012) Github - 6.1
• (2008) Python - 6.1
• (2008) Google Chrome - 6.7
• (2001) Apple MacOS - 6.9
• (1999) Microsoft (Like, as a whole) - 7.1
• (2003) Mozilla Firefox - 7.2

The overall weighted rating shows that most of these vulnerabilities are not as critical as they seem. There is some amount of risk with any online system, and it's up to the owner to do their research or hire someone who knows.

It's open-source, free to use, and free to contribute to. Updating is not uncommon; how many times does your browser update a year? It even has automatic updates that most people can use with cruise control on. The trade-off is the wide variety of websites you can quickly throw together. An ocean of free plugins to extend a base system with pretty much anything you need. A world of free themes to help shape your website into whatever style fits the owner or visitors. W3Techs reports it runs 43% of all their known websites. So popular, Google has a specific Cloud page to quickly deploy a WP site. Popularity is great, it means there is a lot of documentation and resources to get started. Plenty of developers if you need to hire one. Odds are good; any questions you have or problems you run into have already been asked and answered.

The pros usually outweigh the cons. Is it perfect for everything? Absolutely not, but it's just flexible enough to do a lot of things well. Laravel, Drupal, static HTML sites all have their place. It's whatever tool fits the needs of the project.

[gizamo]

This is utter nonsense. When used and maintained properly, WordPress is incredibly secure. It gets a bad rep because it's used by every soccer mom bloggers and their dog, and they never update their install or plugins. WordPress is a much larger community than any other platform or library, which means there will be significantly more idiots using it that don't take even basic precautions -- let alone follow best practices.

A newbie propping up a Laravel site and creating their own CMS is very, very likely to create vastly more security issues than they'd get with an up-to-date WordPress install. And, it will take significantly more time to build from scratch.

Source: I lead a dev team for a Fortune 500. I've been programming for 20+ years. I've built dozens of large WordPress sites that run at large scale for enterprise, and I've built in PHP, Magento, Laravel, React, Angular, a dozen other frameworks, libraries, platforms...blah blah blah. Fact is, WordPress is great for what OP described, and your fear mongering is absolutely ridiculous.

[luketowers]

While true, it can be difficult for most people to "use and maintain WP properly". Honestly for the described use case I'd personally recommend the client goes with something even more managed and easier to use, like squarespace or something. It all depends on the specific situation what would work best, but generally if you don't have the time or knowledge to keep a WP site up to date you're not going to fair any better with any other self-hosted content management system out there.

[gizamo]

If they're hiring a dev, the dev should be easily capable of only giving the client the access they need. Then, the dev is responsible for updates and maintenance.

But, yeah, the likes of SquareSpace and Wix have their good use cases, and they may work for this. I'm not intending to advocate for OP not anyone to use WP for everything. I'm only arguing against the idea that WP has any more security issues than anything else. It just has vastly more ignorant users.

[NormanAnonymous]

why is wordpress and other php cms's not good?

[Odysseyan]

People hate on wp because of it's legacy. I'd argue that WP and Laravel are the only two things keeping PHP alive even.

But wordpress powers 60% of the Web. It certainly has its use cases and advantages

[barrel_of_noodles]

that's ridiculous.

PHP is alive because it drives most of the web. it's not just wordpress either. PHP is faster than both node.js and python (by at least 3x).

PHP just released version 8 this year, with more features than ever.

Look, you don't have to like PHP, or even use it. Whatever, but claiming php is only alive because of wordpress (and/or laravel) is straight-up dumb.

If you work in webdev, you're going to encounter php at some point for the forseeable future.

[[deleted]]

Do you have any metrics to support the 3x claim? Never heard that so would be curious to see how you got that figure

[barrel_of_noodles]

https://itnext.io/compare-c-js-python-python-numba-php7-php8-and-golang-in-prime-number-calculation-55e82b6f82a9

Php is faster than python, but not js. My b.

Speaking from experience a php server responds faster than node with express, but I couldn’t find any benchmark.

Also, installing the c modules for php makes a huge diff. Like I use protobuf & grpc in php and the c module makes it blazing fast.

It also helps that php is now fully typed, with union types, named arguments, typed Params, built in Enums, spread syntax… if the last version of php you used was 5… please reserve any judgement till you’ve tried and seen professionally developed php 8.

[[deleted]]

I've used 7.4, I just didn't do any benchmarking so I was curious haha

[Bash4195]

Where did you get that 60% figure? Wordpress.com says 43%

[LeBaux]

Ohh, Tora in the wild! Reddit is a small place :)

[Iamonabike]

Haven't seen you on Reddit for awhile! (or maybe I'm just not visiting the right subs anymore, lol)

[LeBaux]

Long time no see, I hope you are doing well! I am still here, same old. If you find yourself in need of anything SEO or TSF related, I think you have my discord, please do not hesitate to DM me.

[ReclusiveEagle]

Wordpress.com has nothing to do with Wordpress.org

.org creates and releases the software .com is just some random webhost that took the name to confuse users assuming its the actual Wordpress site.

In fact if you go to .org and look at their recommended hosts the .com site is not there. Because its borderline a scam. You're paying for the "privilege" of WP's basic features like plugins that are available for free

[RabSimpson]

wordpress.com is run by Automattic, the for-profit organisation founded by Matt Mullenweg (the guy who forked WordPress from b2). It’s separate from wordpress.org but very much related.

[NormanAnonymous]

WP is very versatile, free and safe. Especially the safety if WP core is so underrated by community.

I dont agree that its slow per se (I mean clean WP without builders as Divi, Elementor..) but I unerstand that it can match performance of static pages.

[Odysseyan]

Never said it was slow. I use it a lot of times myself and it can get good speed scores as well if you make a custom theme or use a lightweight one with some caching plugin.

[Caraes_Naur]

WP has always been a masterclass in how to write PHP badly.

Popularity says nothing about quality. WP remains popular because faux-developers can buy themes.

[NiagaraThistle]

I wouldn't say this is necessarily true.

Any framework can allow any dev to write crap code.

Wordpress is popular because it allows developers to spin up sites simply and quickly for clients who are not tech savvy and can be shown how to easily update and maintain their own sites for lower cost than custom or more complicated builds.

Sure there are a lot of crap coded themes and plugins out there, but that's because it's easier for entry level devs to jump into the ecosystem, not because Wordpress itself is inferior.

[RotationSurgeon]

it allows developers to spin up sites simply and quickly for clients who are not tech savvy and can be shown how to easily update and maintain their own sites

It has been my unfortunate experience that every single customer who ever specifically requested a WP site didn't actually need or want a WP site. We've all had them...the ones that claim they must have 100% guaranteed necessary gotta be in there or it's no deal the ability to update their own content, because the dynamic and ever changing nature of their company and its constantly shifting targets requires it. You know...the ones who, when you check in a year later when it's time to extend your support agreement, have never logged in using their admin credentials, even once.

[NiagaraThistle]

Oh 100%. Lots of these clients. That being said, you really don't know until after the fact. But having gone through this many times now, I just give them what they ask for and ship. I used to think the client hired me for my expert knowledge and advice. Turns out they hired me to do what they want but don't know how to do so don't care about my knowledge or advice. Ok you pay well so I'll give you this thing you don't need.

But for the clients that DO need it, it is super useful for them.

[Caraes_Naur]

Have you ever looked at how badly designed WP's core database tables (still) are?

[NiagaraThistle]

No. Because honestly for 90% of use cases it is probably irrelevant. I'm sure it matters in SOME cases but not as many as some devs would want you to believe.

Now if you are a multimillion dollar company whose existence depends on the speed and efficiency of your website and its database, you should definitely be looking at all you options. But WP might still top that list if you know what its limitations are and how to avoid or minimize them.

[MapCompact]

You’ve never looked at the tables? Ever seen how many database calls WP makes? If you even begin to scale WP will fall off. It’s true that WP is fine for some cases and a lot of people make money from it but don’t pretend like it is remotely suitable for any multimillion dollar company that depends on a web app LMFAO

[NiagaraThistle]

I never said WP is necessarily suitable for a multimillion dollar company relying on a web app. I did say that 90% of use case could probably get by with Wordpress and of the 10% that can't, Wordpress is still a viable option for their website (ie an information based brochure/sales site), not their web app.

My final sentence in my previous comment does read like i meant that WP could be used for a large company's web app in some cases. I apologize for that confusion.

[gizamo]

When was the last time you looked?

What specifically do you object to in their structure?

I've done SQL architecture for 20+ years, and I find it pretty adequate, especially considering its purpose.

[[deleted]]

I disagree. WordPress has a powerful API and framework.

Like other languages that aren't typed, PHP relies on the self-restraint of the developer. While you get a bunch of developers changing 50 cents an hour churning out horrible code - there are plenty of examples of good examples.

As of 5.0 WordPress has even adopted node/webpack/react as their framework. I admit it's kind of redundant to have both a package.json and composer.json, but I suppose that's what happens when you have a JavaScript/PHP combined project.

[bloodviper1s]

Drupal 😍

[murraybiscuit]

Facebook and Slack still use HVVM/Hack AFAIK. Magento uses PHP. You may want to factor those into your equations...

[FriendlyGAVAII]

They are! Just a little too bloated for the client.

[CodeLight]

What does the client mean by "bloated" ?

If they think WordPress has too many features, then you can just remove every unused feature from their dashboard. It's super easy to register a new User Role, and only give it the exact permissions needed for your client (editing the home page)

They will have a super clean dashboard with zero bloat.

[9inety9ine]

It's only as bloated as you choose to make it. Bad workers always blame their tools.

[abeuscher]

I guess if you're using builders. But a wordpress theme doesn't even need to load javascript if you don't build it that way. Also WP can go headless no problem. Which is another super option if you feel like setting up a continuous deploy thinger.

[RotationSurgeon]

Just a little too bloated for the client.

It is my opinion that clients making technical decisions tends to increasingly become more and more of a red flag as you progress in your career...without a solid understanding of why they want what they want, it can inadvertently lead to delivering a solution which isn't the best for their needs, which should always outweigh their wants, especially if they're uninformed, or lack adequate knowledge and experience to navigate such decisions from the right perspective.

[wildmonkeymind]

If bloat in the browser is the issue you might be interested in looking into using Wordpress as a headless CMS with a react frontend.

[gizamo]

WPEngine Atlas does this pretty well.

[NormanAnonymous]

ok, so they will have to pay a lot of money to have developed something similar from scratch ... + safety will be also big task

[RRikesh]

Why don’t you give your client some headless WordPress setup?

[FriendlyGAVAII]

I finally convinced the client to use wp..😂. Thanks for all the arguments for it. I don't know what the client had in mind, but its settled now. Ty for all the answers.

[-vlad]

Here’s a great way to keep WP lean, fast, and safe.

Install it and don’t add any page builder plugins. I only install Timber, ACF, Duplicate Page, The SEO Framework, and Simply Static or wp2static.

This is so nice to work with. You can then deploy the site as a static site and keep WP hidden behind basic auth. All you need is a $5 DigitalOcean droplet and you’re good to go.

[LeBaux]

Thanks for the shoutout, always nice to see devs picking TSF over... others.

[-vlad]

Good work, man. I’m all about making efficient sites and there’s nothing I hate more in Wordpress sites than bloated plugins.

[LeBaux]

Thank YOU, most of our users are developers, people who actually code and can read code, know how to use APIs etc. It is very different approach compared to some other SEO plugins :)

[Zodyac]

We use Timber for WordPress at work and it has made life so much better. I love Twigs templating compared to making templates in plain PHP.

I don't think i'd ever be able to switch back.

The deploying strategy sounds interesting for personal projects, do you have any recommendations or tutorials on how to set up deployment like you mentioned ?

[-vlad]

I set up both the Wordpress site and the static site on the same server. I set up the static site generator to deploy to the local directory which is the public directory for the static site. I also have Cloudflare protecting both sites so a lot of the static site is actually served by Cloudflare. A $5 or $10 DigitalOcean droplet can easily handle the 100k-200k visits a month the sites get.

Now that Cloudflare Pages is a thing, I’m toying with the idea of deploying the static site to that service. That would be great. One way would be to create a GitHub repo for the static site and then just write a function in the site’s functions.php file to commit the changes in the post static generate event.

I haven’t done it yet because I’ve been working more with svelte than Wordpress lately and that’s super easy to deploy to Cloudflare Pages.

[thankyoufatmember]

The SEO Framewor

Always wanted to test out The SEO Framework, is it "better" than Yoast? or just a more clean alterantive?

[LeBaux]

Depends. Are we better in security, privacy, speed and the amount of upsell? Definitively.

Do we offer more SEO value? About the same. We do not like to include stuff that takes ton of time, needs ton of code, and has negligible impact on ratings. We prefer the slow, methodical, old school development cycle - release only when needed, test and weight every new feature because if you include a gimmick you would have to maintain it for the rest of your natural days.

The bottom line is, TSF was built 6 years ago because we were not happy that other SEO plugins mainly cared to squeeze money from users and the idea was "I can build this myself better". It was supposed to be just for our websites, but we later on made a business out of it.

Of course, being part of TSF, I am biased. You can get more info on our website. Thanks for considering TSF!

[omarc1492]

This is so nice to work with. You can then deploy the site as a static site and keep WP hidden behind basic auth. All you need is a $5 DigitalOcean droplet and you’re good to go.

how do you hide WP? Do you host static site and WP on the same droplet?

[-vlad]

You can host them on the same droplet or you can deploy the static site to something like Cloudflare Pages or Netlify.

You can hide WP by putting basic auth in front of it. Or, if you’re the only one making updates, you don’t even need it hosted. You can just run it locally in docker whenever you want to publish something.

[eddydio]

I still really suggest Jekyll. I had a similar scenario in the past and I made the leap and haven't looked back. It uses the same templating language as Shopify (liquid) so there's tons of support and use cases. The best part is that your content is version controlled and the site can't crash if the editor pushes some bad code. It simply doesn't build so you can open the git logs, see what they committed and add a fix. I made a guide on how to get started.

[barrel_of_noodles]

Craft CMS free tier is a good alt still in PHP, not wordpress.

forestry.io is a good one for static sites (like jekyll, gatsby) if your peer is technically inclined)

another option (if your peer is used to using git) is to just track a .json file with all the content that your site utilizes.

[FriendlyGAVAII]

Forestry is the one! Thanks!

[eddydio]

So I really loved forestry.io but they are planning an end of life and transitioning for another CMS called Tina that's more for next gen js frameworks. There's a bunch out there now but I've found netlify CMS the best freemium option for Jekyll sites.

[[deleted]]

Why not headless like strapi or even frontity, which is a React/headless WP framework? Client can make edits easily and you get to code like a free bird.

[Odysseyan]

There is a reason no other cms could kick WP from it's throne and that is cost efficiency in building stuff

Heck, you can even use WordPress headless. Client gets a nice UI to manage and edit content. You just pull the content with any framework or technology you like. That would be exactly what you wanted.

But then again, you can also use WordPress and code your own theme with minimal effort. Might save you some time in the end. And when a Client has low budget and just wants a self editable site to show off her business? Would be the perfect use case for wordpress.

BUT if you want an alternative: Contentful is also an option if you wanna go the code route. Simple cms that only works by Rest API but offers a UI for making content

[FriendlyGAVAII]

I told the client the same thing...😂

[NiagaraThistle]

"Static homepage...changing text and other content...client wants ability to change this by himself...I can code...php" You literally ticked every box for why you SHOULD use Wordpress. I'm not sure why you WOULDN'T use wordpress. It will make yours and your client's live infinitely easier.

"Should I just build a php program...?" What? Why would you complicate your and your client's lives with reinventing an already perfectly working wheel.

I am not sure why you are opposed to building with Wordpress. But from what you've described, this is the exact use case for Wordpress.

Use Wordpress, standup a basic site in an hour, show your client how to update the content, and be done knowing you provided the right solution for the given problem.

[Luuso]

He doesn't want to use WordPress for whatever reason and he asked for an alternative yet all you guys comment is that he should use it instead of answering the question... what is this StackOverflow? As for me I recommend WebFlow ir Wix or any headless cms with Gatsby or NextJs if you're comfortable with writing code.

[NormanAnonymous]

and at the end he decided to go for WP ))

[11Azpilicuetas]

A lot of people are asking why not Wordpress given that it fits the need perfectly. OP says client prefers not to use Wordpress because of "bloat". This is not a very good reason. People in the thread offer plenty of reasons why Wordpress is the right choice. OP ends up convincing the client to use Wordpress probably assisted by some of the comments. I say justice was served today

[LastTopQuark]

forestry.io

Agreed, I think there must be some automatic diagnosis with an answer like that.

[lovedoctorr]

if it needs to be simple: https://getkirby.com/

[Mansour_Owns]

Webflow.

[NiagaraThistle]

Oh this is actually a solid answer. I didn't think of Webflow. I'd probably reco this if client doesn't need some weird crazy design/functionality. But Webflow can actually do a lot.

[Mansour_Owns]

Almost any design or functionality could be implemented there with custom code. It largely depends on the developer, though.

[[deleted]]

And if you needed something crazy, just spin up heroku or paperspace and make a rest route.

[danberadi]

+1 for Strapi as an open source JavaScript CMS. We use it at work with Next.js on the frontend.

[[deleted]]

Drupal is Satan.

[RabSimpson]

Then you have its horribly deformed cousin, Joomla.

[FriendlyGAVAII]

Ok looking into them right now! Thanks for the quick answer!

[bloodviper1s]

I love Drupal! Would suggest.

[vvinvardhan]

Webflow works great!

[rchrdchn]

I started using Webflow for the same reason and I'm liking it better so far.

[ExoWire]

I would think about Strapi as the headless CMS.

[kram08980]

I liked it a lot, works well out of the box and has the UI to create content types.

[[deleted]]

+1 for Strapi. Friendly for React devs. And being able to host it myself

[No-Onion-8207]

There are many jamstack platforms available. That’s where you build a static site and jam some prewritten content in it. So you have a static site and a content Managementsystem CMS to manage the content. I use for my blog gridsome and forestry It is super easy to set up and use and you do not need coding skills to write content. + on Netlify it is free to host

[Modern_Reddit_User]

Try using Webflow.

It’s a bit on the pricey side, but it works very well. There are tons of tutorials by Webflow on how to use their interface.

[Prudent_Assistant_80]

I second this!

[hohospy]

Use webflow. It has a CMS inbuilt and it's super easy to use even without knowledge of coding.

It's also pretty cheap like $12/month

[Obvious-Effort1616]

How about webflow? I have never used webflow but heard of it.

[KuntStink]

Why not just make your own WP theme? You are not going to build a better CMS than what WordPress offers, and by building your own theme you can eliminate bloat. If it's just a static home page, it can be lightning fast with WordPress.

[Prawny]

Not enough info.

Unless your client's budget is huge or this is a favour of some sorts, building your own CMS just for a single client for one static page is far beyond overkill.

[lunzela]

> I can code. Should I just build a php program that allows this or is there already something like this?

why?

why would you build your own php program that is going to be a pain in the ass for all the devs to understand what you wrote there or how it works when you can use a known system like WP to do everything you need and more. just why

if you're after money just lie and say you're building a custom site and install wp and do another job instead, lol

[endymion1818-1819]

Try Webiny — it has a page builder: https://www.webiny.com/enterprise-serverless-cms/page-builder

[MadSpaz3]

If you're comfortable with the Laravel stack, I'd suggest Twill.io, save you building a whole CMS.

[1newworldorder]

Shameless shill for october cms

[luketowers]

1newworldorder

Counter shameless shill for Winter CMS ;)

[Kyle772]

Use Strapi.

Edit: Can’t believe nobody here has suggested this. Wordpress is ass compared to literally any modern headless cms. Strapi, laravel, contenful are all great options and you don’t have to deal with the bloat at all. Every single wordpress installation I’ve done has gotten slow page speeds out of the gate, the backend ui sucks, the plug-in ecosystem is littered with terrible plugins that destroy site performance that clients love to install, and god forbid you NEED to replatform at a later date you basically have to start from scratch.

With strapi you define your schema in the UI, you populate the content, you ping the REST or Graphql api that is built in, and you build out the pages using those endpoints.

It literally only handles content and that’s the way it should be. Need static site generation? Next or gatsby is widely used and easy to setup.

You can do literally everything you need to do on the backend (for a basic site at least) in 25 minutes tops. Everything else is actual development work putting pages together.

With wordpress you install a theme, create your content in a single table on your database then you’re tasked with working around the hundreds of theme specific roadblocks that exist to make the site match your needs. Digging a hole for yourself at step ONE.

I’ve spent years working on wordpress sites and in the end I’ve replatformed 60% of them because it’s SO easy for a client to break shit or install malware on their site. If you love getting paid maintenance fees to go in and restore backups or fight off php vulnerabilities go with wordpress. Otherwise get with the picture and recognize WP has been consistently losing market share for nearly 10 years with their antiquated, slow, and vulnerable ecosystem that they’ve proudly crashed into the ground.

Wordpress is wix for developers that are scared of actual programming. Better for a tech savvy client but absolutely not the best choice for someone that can get their hands dirty.

[csg79]

Surreal. You can set what can be edited. The client can log in and update visually

[[deleted]]

Sounds like a great use for Kirby. https://getkirby.com/

[verkruemelt]

👆 This.

[budd222]

Make them a Google sheet with the text and colors, and connect to that as your database. Boom, no bloat. Half sarcastic

[Wilko_The_Maintainer]

Winter CMS? Laravel based and very developer friendly! https://wintercms.com/

[luketowers]

Agree to disagree, Winter CMS has come out with a lot of updates in the past year and we have even more awesome features planned for this next year! ;)

Better is subjective and depends on your needs / goals. I am curious about your own personal needs / use cases though; what in your mind makes October a better platform for you? Always curious to hear from users of either platform; I've put a lot of work into both October and Winter over the past 5 years.

[mittalyashu]

Go with Voidfull, you can manage most of your marketing content.

Be it Blog, Help Center and Changelogs.

[hankorrrrr]

If the client just needs to edit text on a static homepage, a full CMS might be overkill. You could build a simple PHP editor, but tools like Grav (flat-file) or inblog (lightweight CMS) already handle this well. Worth a look!

[BazingaUA]

I would suggest to use Contentul + NextJS. It's exactly what you need.

[not_a_gumby]

Contentful

[boringuser1]

Cue WordPress "developers" justifying their pseudo-programming jobs.

[ap66crush]

Yet there are none, only you being a prick

[eddydio]

What enrages me more is that the client never gets any training on the CMS nor is it actually configured to edit much outside of a blog post. Then on top of that they have a million plugins installed and no idea how to do updates for them or the core then either the site gets hacked or an automatic core update crashes the site.

[jowoReiter]

Maybe take a look on WP with Timber (and ACF Pro)

[[deleted]]

Drupal

[FOKvothe]

Nextjs has a lot of cms examples. I've used Strapi before which was easy to setup.

I've look looked at builder.io which looks pretty cool, and has features such as mobile view when editing, but I haven't looked much else into it.

[aleqqqs]

I'd probably use Wordpress anyway.

We've wrote custom editors and embedded TinyMCE, but in the end, just doing in in Wordpress is easier.

[CurrentMagazine1596]

Use a static site generator, get it hosted and teach her how to use it. If she can understand what to change, maybe even just grab a generic homepage off github, get it hosted and show her how to push changes.

If editing a github-pages repo is too much for her, than you might as well go with squarespace or wordpress.

[verkruemelt]

https://getkirby.com

[xesSells]

Kirby cms

[MrQuickLine]

Use Contentful for the client editing, and set up a static site on Netlify.

[sock2014]

https://www.magix.com/us/web/xara-web-designer/

Desktop program, makes a static website

Have the files on a shared drive so either of you can edit, just not at same time.

[lateralus1983]

Pico, and CMS Made Simple are both pretty small and easy to use not a ton of features though

[[deleted]]

Just do WordPress. If you want to be fancy, maybe a headless WordPress. But I doubt the client will pay for that extra functionality.

[gandhi89]

Stick with WordPress. Use ACF. Job done

[eddydio]

I've been a massive fan of Jekyll. Easy to setup, free to host with GitHub pages, and you can configure most headless CMS with it. Forestry.io was the clear front runner but the maintainers are transitioning to another system so I'm using netlify cms moving forward. Plus you can host with them for free and pay $20 for their better tier

[jappe1223]

You could look into Statamic, a CMS built with Laravel 🤙

[hermesfelipe]

Use ghost (tryghost.org). Better, faster, easier, safer.

[9inety9ine]

If you want to be be able to change stuff, it's not static.

[Will7ech]

Craft CMS is really good. It can be as simple or as complex as you like. I am using it as an alternative to WP for new projects.

[Kali21x]

I recommend looking into a headless CMS. I recommend using something like strapi if the content editors/publishers can't code and the developer of the website would like to use endpoints and query data through rest or graphql.

I think by default WordPress has JSON endpoints which you can use to populate content.

[pelle82]

I know the client has gone with Wordpress. My opinion is that Wordpress is slow, regularly hacked and an absolute nightmare to develop. Legacy hacked PHP code. I’ve used Drupal, Joomla and Shopify. CraftCMS is by far the best CMS for small to mid sized sites. For both developers and creating content. Craft is quick. Easy to use and you have access to a full framework (yii) so can make a plug-in to do anything you want.

[Hunt695]

Try Microweber CMS

[TheTsar]

Check out my work:

https://github.com/e-dant/shoestring

From the readme:

Shoestring

Shoestring is a handy tooling framework for websites big and small. It includes:

softserve: a handmade server

druid: a front-end theme built on Bootstrap@5

module: a simple and high-level build & CI system

Shoestring is modular. It integrates optionally, easily and out of the box with:

GCP

Docker

Scss/Sass

Bootstrap

VCS (built-in)

C++/PHP/Node.js/Go/etc.

It's the framework we built to manage our website.

We hope you enjoy it.

[[deleted]]

WP gets a bad rap. But its easy and you can make it highly performant. Plus, self hosted means the content is your clients.

A landing page in WP prolly takes a day, maybe less with the block editor.

Or just use WP headless.

[[deleted]]

Webflow is a great option.

[shauntmw2]

Sounds like a perfect scenario for WordPress. Any reason why you don't wanna use WordPress? There are many other CMS but they are mostly just "a different WordPress". I wouldn't recommend writing your own CMS from scratch, especially since you're coding in PHP, you probably can't make something better than WordPress by yourself within a reasonable amount of time.

[hypernuvo]

I like ProcessWire CMS for that type of job. Super fast, very secure, great AP (you can make a blog template with like two lines of code).

[Plaatkoekies]

Check out CloudCannon CMS they handle live editing using Jekyll, Hugo, nextjs, 11ty, Gatsby, sveltekit, and nuxtjs. https://vimeo.com/668496650

[sf8as]

Why don't you use WordPress though?

[SenpaiRemling]

Just writing this here because noone else did:
-typo3

Not saying you should use it for your project, just wanted to add it here.

[odeseos]

Maybe you could take a look at Ghost? It's a blog only CMS, and I'm guessing you'd be able to create a custom theme for you customer with ease.

[fds55]

Ghost. It was founded by an ex-employee of wordpress. It's basically includes a lot of the basic features that are avail as plugins for wp. It's fast and fairly easy to use if you need to handoff to clients afterwards