I wanted to share a find of mine. I tried tons of different cms solutions and there’s many good ones that fill different purposes. My knowledge is html/css and I want a cms that is as easy for me to manage as it is for for the client. I want a easy way to take my html theme to the cms. I also want it to have add-ons or plugins so you can make it more advanced if need to without the need to code. I thought I have found the perfect cms for me before and know I think I found it, again =D. Its hard to explain but this one I just “get”. Its part database driven and part file base driven. Your theme is stored in files which make that part very easy to handle.
Its open source, its still beta but very stable and its called OctoberCMS
Try it out and let me know what you think.
Even if we waiting for a solution from Webflow it could lack some functionality in the beginning like a member driven site(like I building now) or something else that require that you host it yourself.
That makes me think, the topic of n external CMS solution will always exist, because I don’t see how and why Webflow would come up with CMS features working outside their hosting. That in my opinion will never ever happen.
Oh no, that’s asking to much =D. Kidding! I’m not comfortable doing video demo but maybe doing a small tutorial of some kind. A simple WF theme thats chopped up to suit October for install.
I’m working with Adobe Business Catalyst (SaaS), I do not manage to find something better, my clients, they love it. And it works great with Webflow created sites. The only minus point is the price. Anyway, I’m hoping Webflow will surprise us with a CMS solution.
I’ve never gotten what business catalyst was… Could you describe what you achieve with webflow exported code and catalyst? Considering the price, isn’t Catalyst included in CC?
BC, is a 5 in 1 system, with hosting and email. You get a great CMS (content holders, html Templates), Practical modules such as news, galleries, blogs, forums, ad rotators, you can send html newsletters, eCommerce with secure zones and payment gateways, great reports and an extendable CRM. Everything is integrated, the website forms save data in the CRM, the eCommerce pulls data from the CRM, the marketing Newsletters are send to segmented email lists that are result of website and eCommerce reports. The best of all features and they are very proud, is the web-apps, you can create any kind of app, with front-end user input and editing (via secure zones) and also to feed your clients website by your client, so that they do not touch code or html. The nice integration is that the exported designs from Webflow are easily wired-up to the CMS and the webapps in BC, I create templates in Webflow and import into BC. The same with the web-apps, they have individual templates for their list, detail and edit views.
They have a great partner plan with very good support. My prices since I work with BC are much higher, because I can deliver an online business to my clients without the need to hire a developer.
BC is great. I have been using it for over 3 years now. The limitation are few. Just like discovodar has mentioned, you might not need a developer for the basic/standard stuff. But if you really want to build custom applications, you will need a javascript developer. But that is also changing now as BC is working on a server-side language called “Liquid” which enables designers/developers to do great stuff without writing javascript, but you must have programming knowledge.
Another limitation is that, its greatest feature “web app” is on the ecommerce plan which could be expensive for most clients that require a web presence only.
You can also create custom templates beyond the list, detail and edit views. You can create custom templates for all the modules (news, etc)
I have been using since 2010. I’m quite agree with “topelovely”, those are the limitations, but there is one more, it is very hard to build a multi-langage store.
@discovoador and @topelovely, how would you describe the workflow and effort to take a Webflow template to BC compared to Wordpress or another cms you worked with?
Templating from webflow to BC is simple and straight forward. My workflow:
Create a web page as I would normally do. I would design the entire full page content.
I would then duplicate the page, removing the static designs/content and leave the areas I would want to maintain as a template (Often anything from navigation to footer anything at all I want to keep repeating or make relevant to the page).
Create a folder in webflow and name it “templates” (this is compulsory because BC looks for this folder to pre-populate the system with your templates for easy assigning to pages)
In webflow, I would then move my template webpage into this folder named “templates”
Open the template page and embed a BC code (tag_pagecontent}. This tells BC where to place your contents.
BC is SAAS. So you export webflow codes and host on BC. No Headache. No Server issues. No patch updates due to broken plugin. No hacking issue. Maximum Security. BC would do all that for you and more while you go to sleep.
