CMS Critic

Critic’s Choice for Best Free CMS goes to…

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My choice for Best Free CMS for this year (and the one that will be my #1 recommendation in this category until next years awards) is the one and only, ProcessWire!  ProcessWire is a free, open source content management system/framework that lets you build amazing and unique websites and web applications while maintaining exceptional speed and a small footprint.

One of the biggest bonuses to using ProcessWire is the active and friendly community. Users of the system are made to feel welcome and and are given encouragement and assistance to help get their projects off the ground. Community members are quick to help those in need with not only detailed solutions but also suggestions on how things can be done better.

ProcessWire is an incredibly flexible system to use and when I first took a look at it, it’s minimal interface and size made me think I was dealing with something that had minimal capabilities, but I was sorely mistaken. Once I started working my way through their excellent video tutorials and trying things on my own, I quickly realized the power of this system and that I was, in fact, only limited by my imagination.

As my choice for this year, when asked to offer suggestions for the best free CMS, I will point to ProcessWire.  They will receive my recommendation from now until next year’s winner is announced.

Congratulations to Ryan and the team at ProcessWire, you guys deserve it! If you haven’t already done so, check out my ProcessWire Review to learn more.

Author

Mike Johnston

Mike is a CMS Analyst & Consultant who founded CMS Critic in 2008. He regularly consults with companies to assist them with the CMS selection process and is available for speaking engagements. You can contact him here or follow him on Google Plus.

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  • Joss

    I am so pleased to see this.

    I have only started working with Processwire in the last few weeks having spent a long time with Joomla. My coding skills are weak and I thought I was going to have trouble, but I have really been surprised at how fast I have got on (I am building my second site with it now).

    Because all the output is without any formatting (you just get the data), if you are good with HTML and CSS, you really are free to do whatever you like. Any framework like Bootstrap, no frame work at all – you could even use ancient old basic html and it would work (er, browser allowing).

    If you want to add JQuery plugins (or any others) left right and centre, you can by just following the original plugin instructions – you don’t have to create special versions just for processwire. That has been unbelievably liberating!

    Between it being very straight forward and the community, as you said, being incredibly helpful (even for an old Muso like me), it has so far been a lot of fun with some very satisfying results. And as a bonus, the final site is far faster than my old Joomla equivalent!