May 19, 2021
October CMS: a springtime for web development
Are there alternatives to the new WordPress that look to the future rather than nostalgia for the past? Yes: here is a brief look at the strengths of October CMS and why we chose it.
Are there alternatives to the new WordPress that look to the future rather than nostalgia for the past? Yes: here is a brief look at the strengths of October CMS and why we chose it.
The role of a CMS
An acronym that may be unfamiliar to non-specialists, but one that anyone working in communications cannot ignore. A CMS, or Content Management System, is the tool that enables the design, build, and maintenance of a website.
We can describe it in several ways: scaffolding or skeleton, the "backstage", what holds and organizes the structure and content of a site, from plain text to graphic and audiovisual assets.
CMS for the public and for developers
If we split the world of CMS platforms into two broad categories, an admittedly arbitrary but useful distinction for our purposes, we could talk about user-friendly platforms and developer-friendly platforms. WordPress, for example, is user-friendly content management software used by millions of people worldwide who are not necessarily web developers. The hobby or professional blogger, the small or medium business that wants to build its own site, can find in WordPress a relatively simple and affordable tool.
October, by contrast, is a CMS designed first and foremost for developers: a much smaller, more specific audience with a fundamental advantage. Its primary orientation is development, not satisfying generalist needs at the same time. Let us go a little deeper: a brief comparison of WordPress and October, and why we at Syncronika chose to use October.
October and WordPress: an essential comparison
We have already highlighted the main difference between the two CMS platforms: one speaks to everyone, including and especially clients; the other speaks to developers, as a very clear statement of intent makes plain. Clients do not build sites; developers do. That is not snobbery: it simply reflects what a professional does and which tools let them work well.
The fact that the CMS runs on a PHP environment with Laravel, a modular framework at the heart of many widely used applications, explains its appeal to developers.
A matter of security
A widely adopted CMS like WordPress can present, proportionally and in absolute terms, more security issues than a tool used by a niche of professionals. A vulnerability exposed to a huge number of people must be fixed immediately, because the potential damage is far greater. October, for its part, certainly does not take security lightly, despite its more limited audience.
Turning the page
Pages are the ground zero or smallest unit of a website. In WordPress they are stored in a database and can only be created from the CMS itself, now via the new Gutenberg editor. In October, pages are static files organized in the folder of the chosen theme.
This difference matters for a development team that wants to organize its workflow in an orderly, efficient way. All required pages can be created in bulk with an external application and then uploaded to the CMS. For more agile projects, blogs, or a content writer managing a site independently, writing directly in WordPress may be more convenient. It all depends on project requirements.
Core vs. plug-in
One thing October and WordPress have in common leads to different outcomes. Both CMS platforms keep core functionality to a minimum. WordPress follows the 80/20 rule: if a feature is not needed by 80% of users, a plug-in will provide it. And the WordPress core can be extended with countless third-party plug-ins: a positive aspect, until the plug-ins to manage become too many and potentially conflict with one another.
October takes the Pareto principle to its logical conclusion, summed up in the slogan "Everything you need, and nothing you don't". A minimalist core here too, for page creation and publishing, and plug-ins for all ancillary functions, but in this ecosystem every plug-in is reviewed personally by the founders.
In search of the database
Interaction with the database is another fork where the two CMS platforms take different paths.
To search for or retrieve an object from the database in WordPress, you need to write SQL and set filters and parameters to satisfy the query.
October's approach is different: the database is queried via Laravel's Eloquent ORM, without writing a single line of SQL.
Development and maintenance policies
The advantages WordPress offers its generalist audience can become disadvantages for the vertical niche of developers. The vast reach of WordPress (roughly one site in three is built on this platform) and the need to govern such a large entity from above can unnaturally centralize decisions, as recently happened with the launch of Gutenberg despite many community members being skeptical or opposed. A lack of communication between parties, or simply a unilateral decision?
The scale of the October project, by contrast, allows founders Alexey Bobkov and Samuel Georges, and community manager Luke Towers, to focus more on technical needs related to development and CMS functionality, and leave "politics" aside.
Sebach loves October
The site of one of our flagship clients, Sebach, was born and grew on October.
Thanks to the CMS features, which proved efficient and intuitive for our team, we were able to develop many complex behaviors: from organizing information to shaping all content.
With October we manage all assets and code from the backend in a straightforward way: we added to the minimalist core only the plug-ins we needed, including the one for SEO 301 redirects.
Main source used: https://www.smashingmagazine.com/2019/03/wordpress-october-cms/