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ProcessWire vs WordPress: What are the differences?
ProcessWire and WordPress are content management systems (CMS) used for building websites. ProcessWire offers flexibility and control, while WordPress is known for its user-friendliness and wide adoption. Here are the key differences between ProcessWire and WordPress:
Flexibility and Customization: ProcessWire is highly flexible and allows developers to create custom content structures and templates from the ground up, making it suitable for complex and unique website projects. WordPress, although customizable, follows a predefined structure and is more geared towards users seeking a streamlined setup and management experience.
Content Organization: ProcessWire offers a more granular control over content organization with its field-based approach, enabling the creation of intricate content types and relationships. WordPress uses a post and page structure by default, which is simpler and suitable for straightforward content organization.
Developer-Centric vs. User-Friendly: ProcessWire is developer-centric, providing a powerful API and control over every aspect of the website. This caters to developers seeking to create highly customized sites. In contrast, WordPress is known for its user-friendliness, making it accessible to a wider range of users without extensive technical knowledge.
Community and Plugins: WordPress boasts a vast community and plugin ecosystem, offering a wide range of third-party plugins and themes to extend functionality and design options. ProcessWire has a smaller community and fewer plugins, but it emphasizes quality and security over quantity.
Learning Curve: ProcessWire has a steeper learning curve due to its flexibility and developer-oriented approach, requiring a good understanding of programming concepts and the CMS's architecture. WordPress has a shallower learning curve, making it accessible to users with varying technical backgrounds.
Performance and Scalability: ProcessWire's flexibility allows developers to optimize for performance from the ground up, making it suitable for high-performance websites. WordPress offers performance optimization through plugins but may require more effort to achieve the same level of optimization as ProcessWire for complex projects.
In summary, ProcessWire provides greater customization and control for developers working on complex projects, while WordPress is more user-friendly and has a wider array of plugins and themes for users seeking a more straightforward website setup and management experience.
I usually take a slightly different tack because the technical level of people I usually am dealing with is lower. I tend to be pitching to decision makers and not tech people. A bit of my standard answer is below.
Wix and Squarespace are proprietary systems meant for unsophisticated users who want to build their own websites quickly and easily. While they are good for that specific use case, they do not offer any way to move beyond that if your needs arise. Since they are proprietary closed systems if you need something more advanced at some point your only option is to start over.
WordPress is an Open Source CMS that allows much more freedom. It is not quite as simple to setup and create a new site but if you are talking to me then you are not looking to build it yourself so that is really a non-issue. The main benefit of WordPress is freedom. You can host it on virtually any decent web hosting service and since it uses PHP and MySQL you can have virtually any developer take over a project without problem.
I believe in open source because of that freedom. It is good for me as a developer and it is good for my clients. If something were to happen to me or my company you would have no problem finding another qualified WordPress developer to take over the site in a totally seamless fashion. There would be no need to start from scratch.
Additionally the extensible nature of WordPress means that no matter what your future needs, WordPress can handle it. Adding things like e-commerce and custom quoting systems are just two examples of advanced solution's that I have added to WordPress sites years after they were first built.
WordPress is used by tiny one person businesses all the way up to major websites like the NY Times and I think it is right for this project as well.
So many choices for CMSs these days. So then what do you choose if speed, security and customization are key? Headless for one. Consuming your own APIs for content is absolute key. It makes designing pages in the front-end a breeze. Leaving Ghost and Cockpit. If I then looked at the footprint and impact on server load, Cockpit definitely wins that battle.
10 Years ago I have started to check more about the online sphere and I have decided to make a website. There were a few CMS available at that time like WordPress or Joomla that you can use to have your website. At that point, I have decided to use WordPress as it was the easiest and I am glad I have made a good decision. Now WordPress is the most used CMS. Later I have created also a site about WordPress: https://www.wpdoze.com
Pros of ProcessWire
- Flexible, powerful, simple15
- Great community support15
- Superb api13
- Easy to learn and powerful to work with11
- 100% custom frontend code4
- Easy to create custom functionality4
- Template engine agnositc2
Pros of WordPress
- Customizable416
- Easy to manage367
- Plugins & themes354
- Non-tech colleagues can update website content259
- Really powerful247
- Rapid website development145
- Best documentation78
- Codex51
- Product feature set44
- Custom/internal social network35
- Open source18
- Great for all types of websites8
- Huge install and user base7
- I like it like I like a kick in the groin5
- It's simple and easy to use by any novice5
- Perfect example of user collaboration5
- Open Source Community5
- Most websites make use of it5
- Best5
- API-based CMS4
- Community4
- Easy To use3
- <a href="https://secure.wphackedhel">Easy Beginner</a>2
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Cons of ProcessWire
Cons of WordPress
- Hard to keep up-to-date if you customize things13
- Plugins are of mixed quality13
- Not best backend UI10
- Complex Organization2
- Do not cover all the basics in the core1
- Great Security1
