I have been searching for a good solution for an old gaming community that was using IPS as it’s framework. I’m trying to decide if October CMS is a good solution. The state of his current site is very stagnant and most gaming communities use Discord as their communication platform these days.
Watching videos and reading about Tailor, it’s very exciting to see this. I’ve been a Wordpress guy and have always used tools like Jet Builder to make my own custom post types/taxonomies in WP. Tailor seems to do the exact same thing and since that’s a core component it’s amazing. (Hope they expand the features of it in the future)
So I was wondering if any experts with October could help steer me in the right direction or even if this is the right tool to use to re-build the site.
well I’m not an October expert, but since I’ve been working with WordPress (prior version 5.0.0) for years I can say that OctoberCMS is not comparable to WordPress at all. Not only because the codebase of WordPress has never been completely modernized while Laravel uses the most modern approaches, but also because the whole environment and the way how you achieve things is completely different. As a former OctoberCMS dev said once, “[OctoberCMS is] more of a Content Management Framework than your average CMS”.
The huge Pro and Contra is:
While WordPress provides dozens of plugin for almost everything, October offers rather less here and requires some coding / programming on your own side (even with Tailor). However, creating new and extending existing functions and features is way easier, compared to WordPress, due to the Laravel background and the dynamic approaches and behaviours of October itself. You probably just need to have both open, the OctoberCMS and the Laravel documentations (especially for Eloquent, which is the $wpdb from Laravel).
Anyways, I would highly recommend playing around with the docker development instance first. As said above, Laravel is a complete different way of programming (compared to WordPress) and the same goes for the main templating part. So to answer your question: I think OctoberCMS is the right tool for your website, but more important is the question if it is the right tool for you.
For me, since I started using Laravel and OctoberCMS (a few years ago) I would never touch WordPress ever again. I mean, you can achieve everything in both systems, but OctoberCMS makes way more fun (and is a huge time saver).
~Sam.
PS.:
Oh, and you should also check out the official plugins by RainLab, which adds the default stuff like a blog, static pages frontend users and more.
The site in question has been online since 1999. It’s in major need of a total overhaul but the owner is nostalgic about the user database and forum post. My suggestion was to archive the old software and put it into a “read only” state and build the new site from the ground up. With the lack of site activity, I feel like there isn’t a need for a heavy in-depth forum and the site should focus on news related to the games the community plays vs in general.
My major issue with WP is the code is very outdated and add a few plugins and your site is lagged out to almost unusable levels. Even with a litespeed VPS I find the speed abysmal.
I’ll take your suggestion and try the docker and see how it feels.
Sounds like a good fit, since October CMS doesn’t get too fancy with new technology by design. It gives the codebase greater longevity. Take a lot at this article too…
October makes one bold but obvious assumption: clients don’t build websites, developers do.
Even though the platform is developer-centric, it does not necessarily mean it is unfriendly to clients.
The idea is the developer can design a bespoke CMS for their customers and clients. This is the most vital selling point, the ability to build interfaces that require little to no explanation to use.