I just discovered this CMS which actually has a long track record. How it escaped my notice all these years, well — escapes me! It recently revamped its business model and is now open source. I set up a testbed to take concrete 5 (c5) for a spin around the block. The following are my results, after having worked with it for less than 24 hours.

I’m first going into a step by step review of some of the features of c5 and contrast them with WordPress (WP) and CMS Made Simple (CMSMS), two content management systems with which I am very familiar. Later, I’ll give my summary of c5’s strengths and weaknesses and my closing thoughts.

Download and Installation

Download and installation were a snap. I generally am a hands-on kind of gal and prefer to set up my own databases and users and FTP programs to my server. Once I downloaded c5, unzipped it to a folder on my hard drive, I FTP’d the contents to my newly-created subdomain at http://concrete5.mytestbed.com.

It actually took longer to wait for the upload than it did to actually install c5! And it didn’t take long to upload it at all. The installation screen is very intuitive; you must supply it with the database host, database name, user name and password, just like any other similar script. It went through its pre-installation checklist and my server passed with flying colors. Like CMSMS, it asks you whether you want the database populated with data, and I answered yes, because with a new and unfamiliar CMS, I like to read the helpful information that’s usually found there. So we’re off to the races!

Poking Around Under the Hood

If you’re used to WP, CMSMS, Movable Type or Joomla!, forget it. The c5 dashboard will take some getting used to, but it’s very intuitive. The big difference you’ll notice right off the bat is that it’s not really task-oriented. Do I want to … write a post, create a page, upload media, etc. It’s dynamic in that once you’re logged in, the toolbar is ever-present.

The ever-present C5 toolbar.

Like WP and MovableType before it, the devs have wisely decided to keep the c5 dashboard “ribbon” on the left side of the viewport. Items are grouped logically by task.

Editing Content

Once you’re logged into your backend, you have a login link available at the bottom of your screen. Clicking that takes you to the backend, where nothing actually happens right away, except the page you are on changes. It suddenly has boxes around it.

Login to your C5 site as an admin and you can now edit your site pages.

You decide when you set up your templates (if you are going to “roll your own,” as I always do) which areas will be editable. This is important if you are a designer/developer and have a client who’s not so tech savvy. You can keep them out of areas you don’t need them to edit (such as headers and footers), and just let them focus on editing content. And each editable area is very flexible in that you can basically add just about anything to it, images, video, a file list, a list of site pages, text, etc.

Click on any area and you can edit it to add any kind of content you like. You can even delete the content block entirely.

When you are logged into the site, you can hover your mouse over the boxes to see them change to gray. Once grayed out, you can click and edit or add content or delete the content (or the entire content block) altogether. And you can drag the boxes around and place them anywhere you want.

Private Members Only Content

A big deal for me with WordPress is there’s no really easy way to have private content. Sure, you can password-protect a post. But when I say private content, I mean a page or several pages of content that are NOT generally available to a guest or non-registered, non-logged in user. Drupal can handle this by way of its organic groups node. CMSMS does so with its Front End Users and Self-Registration modules. WordPress cannot do this without a plugin, and the only ones I am aware of cost a bit of money.

Prior to discovering c5, we chose CMSMS when our clients had a need for this feature. Several of our clients are homeowner associations and utility districts with boards of directors. Sometimes those board members want to provide access to online documents only to their constituents and not the general public. So we now have another solution to offer them when building sites such as those.

Creating Private Content is a Snap!

Page Attributes

c5 makes it easy to configure each of your site’s pages just the way you want. Via the Page Attributes section, it’s easy to optimize your site for search engines on a page by page basis. You can also elect to exclude a page from navigation (something that WP cannot do without a plugin; CMSMS has a checkbox similar to c5’s dropdown).

Optimizing Your Site With Metadata is Child's Play!

File Manager

The c5 File Manager is slick as can be. It runs circles around WP’s or CMSMS’s file manager. As with WP and CMSMS, it’s not just for images, but anything you desire. My testbed has a combination of images (.png, .gif and .jpg), Word documents and PDFs. c5 recognizes them all. What’s great about this system is that you can organize your media into “sets” (like Flickr), so that if you want to deploy a set as a slideshow or in a gallery, all you have to do is select the set and you’re good to go. Very elegant. The native slideshow which appears on the front page of our testbed even lets you assign a clickable link to the slide show panel. This cannot be done natively in CMSMS or WP and can only be done in WP with the use of a plugin. (AFAIK, it cannot be done with CMSMS at all outside of using Flash.)

C5's File Manager: Sheer Elegance!

Addons and Themes

Of course there are addons and themes. As with WP, the themes are a mixed bag of premium and free themes. Some of the free themes are quite lovely. It looks like a lot of talented designers have been creating themes for c5. There aren’t quite so many addons as WP has plugins or CMSMS and Drupal have modules or Joomla! has extensions. And sadly, what is available generally costs a bit of money. So your caveat is that while c5 itself is free and open source, you may have to shell out a bit of money for some addons. Still, when you think of the ease with which end users can update their site, that’s not a big price to pay. And I’d like to hope that as c5 picks up momentum, as I hope it will, there may be more addon developers willing to release some more free addons.

Addons to further enhance C5.

Designing for Concrete 5

Gratifying is the ease with which you can change your font styles and sizes and your body text and link colors on the fly in c5. Clearly, it was designed with the end-user in mind, NOT the designer/developer. You’re probably better off cutting your design to HTML and CSS and then mortising it to C5 once you determine what your editable content areas will be. Once you map those out, you just need to create a screen shot, a description.txt file and make sure that all the C5 guts are where they belong so C5 can find and utilize your theme. It’s not as easy as firing up WP in a browser and going to town on a template or stylesheet, but as I said, it’s not for your convenience. It’s for your client’s convenience, and I personally am itching to design and develop my first C5 site (other than playing around in my sandbox).

Tweaking some theme settings.

You can put custom CSS directly into the design editing area, but if you’re like me, sooner or later, you’d end up with all kinds of style overrides in that custom CSS box, so may as well develop the theme from scratch and get it the way you want it. Bearing in mind all the while that the client can still make some minor changes, but generally that’s all they ever want to do anyway so I see this is a great way to nail down your design and the templates, and have complete control over what they can and cannot edit once the site’s been handed off to them.

Inserting Custom CSS

WYSIWYG

I for one detest WYSIWYG editors. I cut my teeth on Notepad, then Eversoft 1stPage, and now Edit Plus and TopStyle. So I disable those on the backend every chance I get. But those of you smitten with WYSIWYG will absolutely love c5’s version of it. Very elegant and easy to use.

What you see is sheer elegance!

Uniquely Concrete 5

c5 has some nice touches that bear mentioning here. One that I really like is version control. Each page that you edit is kept track of. When you exit to save the changes, you are presented with a version screen and you can name the version and describe the changes you made. You can then choose to publish the changes or keep them in draft form. When the changes are in draft form, only you and any other admins can see those pages. The general public sees ONLY the published version of that page, even if later draft versions exist. I think this is a nice way for a group to collaborate on changes behind the scenes while keeping the original page intact until a decision about the changes is made.

Version Control for Each Page

Another nice touch that c5 has included in its dashboard are some site stats in bar graph form, along with the ability to upload the favicon of your choice, and enter any analytics code you want your site to run. Nice work, C5!

Sitewide settings at your fingertips!

For the Average Web Master

I think Concrete 5 is a great CMS for the casual web master as long as his site isn’t a blog. If he has static pages and a variety of content, C5 is perfect. With the wide selection of premade themes already available, both free and premium, your average web master should have no trouble getting a C5 site up and running in nothing flat, and has enough leeway to personalize the site with header graphics and typography tweaks, making it uniquely his.

The backend is very intuitive, adding and editing pages is child’s play, uploading and managing documents, images and other media is a breeze, and setting up a photo gallery or slideshow is a mouseclick away. As far as e-commerce is concerned, while C5 does have a shopping cart module, if you really want a dedicated cart, or an easy to use cart, you may not want to use C5. I’ve heard some grousing on the forums about the e-commerce module. So if that’s something you really want, in my opinion, you’re better off using a dedicated cart script or using Joomla! or WordPress to drive your e-commerce site.

What About Web Developers/Web Designers?

If they are looking to give their clients a great CMS with which to maintain their site once it’s been developed, C5 is the answer. The learning curve on the way C5’s theme templates and code work may take some getting used to, but once learned, it seems very easy to fit just about any design to C5. Of course, the more intricate the layout, the more care will have to be taken when selecting editable content areas. And of course, you lose the luxury of being able to edit your theme templates and stylesheets online.

Just like WordPress, and CMS Made Simple, Get Simple CMS, and the plethora of carts out there, no one CMS can claim to fill every need. Fortunately, C5 isn’t making those kind of claims. I believe the developers had a particular user in mind when creating C5 and they seem well aware of the niche market they will be serving. For a small business owner, this is great news. This means he doesn’t have to learn HTML or CSS or PHP to add content to his site. For a developer or web designer, this means you’ll just have to work a tiny bit harder to learn the C5 ropes. Which may mean you’ll need to “unlearn” the way you work with other CMSs such as CMSMS, WordPress, Drupal, etc.

All that being said, I can say that I cannot remember being this excited about a newfound CMS since I discovered Get Simple CMS, back in August of 2009. I can already see that I might want to play around with porting this web design site to C5 at some point in the future.

So What Do I Really Think?

When I find a CMS with a backend as intuitive as C5, that makes adding content and working with pages as easy as C5 does, I don’t mind a little bit of a learning curve because I think it will be worth it to me in the long run to offer this CMS to my clients as a very viable option for their web site needs. I may not jump off the WordPress bandwagon just yet, but I do believe I’ll proudly add Concrete 5 to my arsenal of CMSs to turn to when a client needs what it can deliver.

Resources

• Concrete 5 Official Web Site
• Concrete5 on Twitter (I’d love to see a different background there; they have a lovely logo; they should use it!
• Franz Maruna’s (C5 Dev) Technical Blog
• First Impressions From Joe LeBlanc, April 2009
• Review by Mike Childress, CMS Critic, November 2009
• Review by Plethora Designs, March 2010 (comparison with Joomla!, Drupal and WordPress
• Reviews of Concrete 5 at DesignResources.com

Comparison Chart

[1] Using the News or Blogs Made Simple Module.
[2] Using the Press Release Addon.
[3] Via a CMS Made Simple Module.
[4] Via a WordPress plugin.
[5] Via a Concrete 5 Addon.

Our latest whitepaper is now available for download:
Choosing a Reliable Web Host.

WordPress 3.0 Beta was released today and of course I had to download it and check it out. You can view the sandbox here:

http://wpbeta.mytestbed.com

The first time I tried uploading it, I got all kinds of PHP errors, which was frustrating. Figuring it was my connection, I deleted the /wp-admin, /wp-includes and all *.php files (except wp-config.php) in the root and started over. That fixed the hiccup. The first thing I noticed was the fact that there is only one theme, “TwentyTen” developed by “the WordPress team.” But you now have the ability to select from several provided images or upload and crop any image of your choosing to use as a header graphic for the theme. The theme quite reminds me of Chris Pearson’s Cutline theme.

WordPress 3.0 Beta: One lonely default theme

There’s still more you can do with this theme. You can now also add your own background image.

WordPress 3.0 Beta: Add your own custom background!

The Appearance section of WordPress seems to have undergone the most striking changes, giving more power to the end user to change the appearance and layout of his site without touching the template files or stylesheet. This includes a new “Menus” section and a beefed up Widgets area. Of course, the number and flexibility of widgets offered is theme-specific, but you should probably use this new default theme as a jumping off point for any new themes because it does seem to offer a lot more flexibility with widget placement. Behold:

WordPress 3.0 Beta: Widgetized to the max!

Another new offering in 3.0 is Menus. A big warning sits at the top of this page: Beta Testers: This feature is still under construction. You can try it out, but expect it to change in layout and functionality in the second beta release., but so far it shows promise. You can customize a menu by adding any number of external links, other menus, categories and WordPress pages. We’ve configured one such menu on our testbed under “New for 3.0″ in the sidebar. It features custom links, the About Page and the single “Uncategorized” category. So it looks to be very flexible. I hope this feature survives beta.

One thing I noticed that I liked, it’s something minor, but it has always bothered me. The devs finally put the settings for your /uploads under Settings > Media.

WordPress 3.0 Beta: Media and uploads folder settings logically in one place now!

The latest WordPress blog article touches on Tumblog-like post types (e.g., video, audio, quotes, picture, etc.), and there’s an article discussing it, but unless I’m missing something, looks like it either needs to be manually added (eek!) as explained in the article or it just didn’t make it into this beta release.

Update: Looks like you just need to put code into your functions.php file to “initialize” each post type you want available, like this one for movies, for example:

function post_type_movies() {
	register_post_type(
                     'movies', 
                     array('label' => __('Movies'), 
                             'public' => true, 
                             'show_ui' => true,
                             'supports' => array(
                                        'post-thumbnails',
                                        'excerpts',
                                        'trackbacks',
                                        'custom-fields',
                                        'comments',
                                        'revisions')
                                ) 
                      );
	register_taxonomy_for_object_type('post_tag', 'movies');
}
add_action('init', 'post_type_movies');

More on register_post_type from the WordPress Codex.

The install is still fresh. Our sandbox has been up less than half an hour. I just poked around long enough to throw this cursory review together. Expect more from me in the days and weeks to come. Meanwhile, if you are brave and curious, you might want to take 3.0 Beta for a spin yourself. Drop a comment and tell me your impressions about it.

With the economy in its current slump and the net a quick and easy way to set up online shop, more and more people are looking for viable web hosting solutions. We’ll show you what to look for (and what to look out for) when choosing a web host for your online business.

In order to intelligently shop for web hosting, you need to get the “lay of the land”, to “speak the language.” Here are some common terms used in the web hosting industry and their meanings.

Bandwidth:

Bandwidth refers to how much data you can send through a network or modem connection. It is usually measured in bits per second, or “bps.” You can think of bandwidth as a highway with cars travelling on it. The highway is the network connection and the cars are the data. The wider the highway, the more cars can travel on it at one time. Therefore more cars can get to their destinations faster. The same principle applies to computer data — the more bandwidth, the more information that can be transferred within a given amount of time.[1] See also “data transfer,” supra.

Disk Space:

Disk space (usually expressed in gigabytes or GB) generally refers to the amount of server disk storage allocated to your account. This space is used to store your HTML files, graphics, audio clips, log files, and all other files that make up your Web site, as well as email messages.

Data Transfer (Traffic):

[T]he amount of data downloaded from a Web site. This information can be useful, particularly for measuring the number of visitors to a Web site.[2] See also “Bandwidth,” infra.

Server Logs:

Files stored on a web server that records every item downloaded by users. These include web (.php, .html) files and images files.[3]

E-Mail Forwarding:

Email forwarding can … redirect mail going to one address and send it to one or several other addresses. Vice versa, email items going to several different addresses can converge via forwarding to end up in a single address in-box.[4]

Autoresponder:

A program that responds to an e-mail or other inquiry without human intervention. For example, if an e-mail address is no longer valid, an auto-responder in the mail server sends an “undeliverable message” automatically to the sender. If the recipient has a new e-mail address or is on vacation, an auto-responder can be set up to reply with an appropriate message.[5]

POP3 E-Mail Accounts:

POP stands for “Post Office Protocol” and is a simple, standardized method of delivering e-mail messages. A POP3 mail server receives e-mails and filters them into the appropriate user folders. When a user connects to the mail server to retrieve his mail, the messages are downloaded from mail server to the user’s hard disk.[6] See also “IMAP,” supra.

IMAP E-Mail

Stands for “Internet Message Access Protocol” and is pronounced “eye-map.” It is a method of accessing e-mail messages on a server without having to download them to your local hard drive. This is the main difference between IMAP and another popular e-mail protocol called “POP3.” POP3 requires users to download messages to their hard drive before reading them. The advantage of using an IMAP mail server is that users can check their mail from multiple computers and always see the same messages. This is because the messages stay on the server until the user chooses to download them to his or her local drive. Most webmail systems are IMAP based, which allows people to access to both their sent and received messages no matter what computer they use to check their mail.[7] See also “POP3,” infra.

MYSQL:

A very popular open source, relational DBMS for both Web and embedded applications from MySQL AB, Uppsala, Sweden (www.mysql.com), which was acquired by Sun in 2008. Pronounced “my S-Q-L,” it runs under Linux/Unix, Windows and Mac. The free MySQL Community Edition is available under the GNU license, and more than 100 million copies have been downloaded worldwide. MySQL Enterprise is the more comprehensive, paid version. [] Applications using MySQL are written in PHP, Perl, Python, Ruby, Java, C/C++, C# and Visual Basic.[8]

Parked Domain:

Domain parking refers to the registration of an Internet domain name without that domain being used to provide services such as e-mail or a website. This may have been done to reserve the domain name for future development, and to protect against the possibility of cybersquatting.[9]

Subdomain:

A domain that is part of a larger domain name in DNS hierarchy. DNS hierarchy consists of the root-level domain at the top, underneath which are the top-level domains (e.g., *.com, *.net, *.org) followed by second-level domains and finally subdomains. For example, in the domain name blog.pixelita.com, “blog” is is a subdomain of the larger second-level domain “pixelita.com.” Subdomains appear as folders when viewed in an FTP client, but the server treats them as if they were domains.[10]

Sources:

[1] http://www.techterms.com/definition/bandwidth

[2] http://dictionary.bnet.com/definition/data+transfer.html

[3] http://www.davechaffey.com/E-marketing-Glossary/Server-log-files.htm

[4] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_forwarding

[5] http://www.pcmag.com/encyclopedia_term/0,2542,t=auto-responder&i=38228,00.asp

[6] http://www.techterms.com/definition/pop3

[7] http://www.techterms.com/definition/imap

[8] http://dictionary.zdnet.com/definition/MySQL.html

[9] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_parking

[10] http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/S/subdomain.html

Pricing and Services

In the United States, web hosting packages range from as little as $5/month to as much as $1,000/month or even more. Any good Web hosting plan should offer a certain amount of disk storage space and traffic (bandwidth) for a fixed price. It should also come with an overage feature to automatically bill you (rather than suspend your account/web site) if the site exceeds its bandwidth limits. The web hosting company should also be able to upgrade you should you at any time during your contract decide that you have outgrown your current web hosting package.

In our experience, a small business or professional requires between 500-1000MB of disk space and approximately 1-3GB of bandwidth to run efficiently and to allow for growth. However, if your web site is content rich — that is, if you provide a lot of media content, podcasts, videos, etc., then your disk space and bandwidth requirements increase exponentially. But there is generally a web hosting plan that will suit even a very high profile/high traffic site. Also, if you do your homework and choose a web host who is flexible enough to offer upgrades before the expiration of your current plan, you should never have to worry about your site being down due to excessive bandwidth or lack of disk space.

Finding the Perfect Web Host

Nothing beats word of mouth as a way to find that perfect web hosting company. But if no such recommendations are forthcoming, there are several online sources to help you separate the wheat from the chaff, the signal from the noise with regard to web hosts.

• TopHosts.com
• HostingReview.com
• WebHostingGeeks.com
• HostCritique.net
• WebHostingSearch.com
• WordPress-friendly web hosts
• CMS Made Simple-friendly web hosts

Things to Ask a Prospective Web Host

Here’s a quick and dirty checklist of things to ask when shopping around for a web host. Most web hosts have an online forum that contains a summary of their most popular packages and features. But nothing beats an email to their sales department — or better yet, a phone call to their toll-free number — to find out if they have the minimum requirements you’ll need.

• How many MySQL databases can I have?
• What happens if I exceed my allotted bandwidth in any given month?
• How do you handle CGI? (Most let scripts run in a cgi-bin folder, but others use what is known as a suex or cgi wrap. This may be important depending on which scripts you plan to run.)
• Do you have month-to-month plans? (This might be helpful if you want to try out the web host before committing six months or a year in advance payments.)
• Do you give discounts for paying six months/year/2 years in advance?
• What is your adult content policy? (This may be relevant if you plan to run an adult-content web site as some web hosts, such as GoDaddy.com, have clauses in their Terms of Service which prohibit sexually-oriented web site content.)

This is the first in a series of 10 Things in 2010. It’s a short list of 10 things you can do to stand out in the dog-eat-dog world of web design, where — as everyone knows — anyone can be (and is) a web designer. </snark>.

1. Faster Response Time

Set the stage for a pleasant experience with a prospective client by returning phone calls or answering emails promptly, at least within 24 hours if not sooner. How you handle a prospective client sets the tone for his or her experience with you once money changes hands and may even be the deciding factor in your being hired above another design firm.

2. Better Organization

Nothing destroys credibility faster than floundering around with lost emails, misstating facts because you cannot locate that original email or document. Invest in a project management program to help keep you and your clients organized and all relevant information at your fingertips.

3. Detailed Proposals

Nothing spells disaster faster than an incomplete or vague proposal. The proposal should form the basis of the contract between you and your client and while it cannot, by definition, be ironclad, it should answer the question of exactly what will and will not be provided and at what cost and in what time frame.

4. Solid Contracts

Never enter into a project without a contract and never do business with anyone not willing to sign a contract. If you haven’t done so yet, you should consider investing in legal counsel (and better yet, counsel who specializes in Internet and IP law) to flyspeck your form contract. Don’t wait for litigation to ensue to discover that your contract is toothless.

5. Don’t Be a “Disappearing Web Designer”

If I had a dollar for every client who told me their previous web developer “ran off,” I’d be a rich woman. Don’t be such a person. If you cannot fulfill your end of the bargain in the time and at the cost you originally quoted, tell the client right away. If your contract is fair to both sides, there may be a penalty (cost) for you to walk away. But better to do that than risk ruining your hard-won reputation. If you build an “exit clause” into your contract and make it fair for the client, most will be understanding about such circumstances. But if you find yourself making a habit of this, you should rethink your proposal strategies.

6. Add a Unique Value

The best way to win and keep clients is to add something of value that they cannot get anywhere else. This can be anything you think you do better than others, such as a custom Twitter background, custom desktop wallpaper, a timeframe where you offer free tech support. Sit down and figure out what you can bring to the table that no one else can and market it like crazy. It doesn’t have to be something that you offer “free,” just something unique that will set you apart from the herd.

7. Deliver an Outstanding Work Product

In other words, don’t be lazy, careless or sloppy. I’ve encountered a few professional web designers who are careless with spelling (this is a pet peeve of mine), with fact-checking and with coding. Don’t be such a person. If you don’t know, for example, if it’s “Wordpress” or “WordPress,” then look it up. Validate all your code, CSS and HTML alike. Give the client what he paid for.

8. Don’t Assume

Everyone knows that old adage, Assume makes an ‘ass’ out of ‘u’ and ‘me’ — so don’t do it! If you are unsure about a client’s directive, ask. If you wonder whether he or she has secured rights to use an image that’s been provided to you, ask. You may find out they haven’t so best to nip that problem in the bud. Asking questions doesn’t imply that you aren’t smart. It implies that you care enough to make sure before you proceed.

9. Don’t Bite Off More Than You Can Chew

If a client’s requirements are beyond your scope of expertise and you don’t have a sub you can run to, then politely decline the project and don’t be shy about telling the prospective client why. One of two things will happen. Either the client will appreciate your candor and honesty, take his business elsewhere and you will be spared the embarrassment of delivering substandard work, or it may be that you and the client can sit down and work out a solution that is within your skill level. Again, it comes down to #8 (Don’t Assume).

10. Communicate, Communicate, Communicate

If I could only list one thing that you can do to improve service to your clients, it would be this. You’ll know after a few phone calls and/or emails what your client’s “communication style” is, and you can follow his lead. But do update your client with status reports, shoot him an email (or post to your Project Management area) when you encounter a snag. Let him know immediately if something becomes impossible to deliver or impossible to deliver on schedule. Amend your contract to account for the snag and have your client sign off on it. But don’t keep him in the dark.

Do these things and you should have more and better business and more and better (and happier) clients in 2010!