Hello community,
I am looking for a system to replace wordpress.
My goal is to build a webpage with a simple start page, an ‘about me’ and an impressum, so nothing special, but hopefully good looking.
I only use open source software, FOSS whenever possible. I have a rough understanding of some HTML, CSS, PHP, but I am happy if my future webpage doesn’t rely too heavy on my knowlege of those languages.
Wordpress feels very over the top and not many things work out of the box - you have to pay for premium products if you want a functional page, that doesn’t look exactly like twenty twenty-two. I wanted to move my wordpress site from one host to another host… Not easy, unless you pay for a plugin of course.
Now I found ModX, a CMS which looks like it is much less clunky, has more free ‘plugins’ and it looks quite intuitive with it’s folder structure.
My questions:
- Has anyone used both CMS and can compare them based on their personal experience?
- What CMS or other way do you prefer to build your simple webpage (FOSS only version)?
Edit: Thank you all for great recommendations and for sharing your experience! I learned: A full CMS is overkill for my usecase. Other, more suitable options, are:
- Flat-file CMS (Grav, Automad,…)
- static-file-generators (Hugo,…)
- Emacs-org-html-export (…)
- Build from scratch with html and css
I have done this, but instead of PHP, I have used Server Includes, which is a performant and simple way to add repeating headers and footers etc without extra dependecies. Nginx, Apache and Caddy all supports Server Includes, but with different syntax. I have used Caddys templating language, which I am most comfortable with.
Oh man this brings back memories! It is indeed a simple way to get some basic “site template” without needing a lot of infrastructure.
It actually works great for slightly more complex stuff to, like converting markdown to HTML etc. Caddys documentation is made using Server Includes for example.