My initial experience with October was very positive. However, the more I get into it, the more I see it has issues and a certain lack of clarity regarding what exactly it is trying to be. So far concerns are:

1) the Static Pages plugin. What is the idea behind it given it's developed by the October team yet doesn't fit into the October workflow (It's odd that it doesn't fit with either the October process or accepted CMS practice)?
2) that Layouts seems to be connected to content. There is a github issue that has gone nowhere re. removing a layout also deletes content. Although a vital issue, it is months old with no response or solution from the team.
3) the backend seems to not cater for regular users. It's seems the WYSIWYG side of things was an afterthought and I don't see any info that suggests making the user experience easier is part of the objective.

Last updated 7 years ago

Interesting, as I've recently started having similar reservations.

I appreciate that there is a need to keep the core as simple as possible, but I really do think that some of the 'client friendly' functionality introduced with the Static Pages plugin should have been integrated into the native CMS pages, rather than as a plugin.

The ability to have multiple editable areas and WYSIWYG editors for the native CMS pages would make a huge improvement to making October CMS more client friendly.

One of the biggest drawbacks I'm finding is the inability to customise which buttons and dropdowns appear within the WYSIWYG editor. With other CMSs, I can add a dropdown list containing options such as 'blue heading' and when the client selects that, the text that they enter immediately picks up the relevant CSS class from my stylesheet and looks just the same as it will one the public side, but I can't seem to do that with October CMS.

Last updated 7 years ago

I think you've hit the nail on the head here:

but I really do think that some of the 'client friendly' functionality introduced with the Static Pages plugin should have been integrated into the native CMS pages, rather than as a plugin.

The really odd thing for a new CMS is that the only way it is client friendly is with a Wysiwyg plugin that is not maintained or a static pages plugin that doesn't integrate either functionality or aesthetically.

What a waste of a potentially good system.

Unless there is sign of some advancement or improvement here, I'll be using Kirby (which also has a much more active community). Might be worth posting there what you need and see if you get some good info back.

Last updated 7 years ago

mjd30022128 said:

1) the Static Pages plugin. What is the idea behind it given it's developed by the October team yet doesn't fit into the October workflow (It's odd that it doesn't fit with either the October process or accepted CMS practice)?

Maybe that is why it is a plugin? What is accepted CMS practice and who is the authority on this?

2) that Layouts seems to be connected to content. There is a github issue that has gone nowhere re. removing a layout also deletes content. Although a vital issue, it is months old with no response or solution from the team.

This has never, ever, happened for me

3) the backend seems to not cater for regular users. It's seems the WYSIWYG side of things was an afterthought and I don't see any info that suggests making the user experience easier is part of the objective.

I agree that you could argue that the WYSIWYG plugin could have been developed by the October team. But WYSIWYG is no rocket science in 2017 and the plugin that is available works fine.

Whether the CMS is catering to regular users depends on how you configure it (using groups and permissions). October CMS works really well for our commercial clients. Comparing it to something as simple as Kirby makes no sense to me at all. October very clearly focusses on development (e.g. the Builder plugin, the code editors).

Focussing on end-users or everything and the kitchen sink plugins would make it... would not make it innovative to begin with.

Last updated 7 years ago