Hi,
I’ve selfhosted Grav for two years going to three, but I want to move on to something else. I am looking for a flatfile CMS. I have experimented a bit and the best I found so far is Automad, but it isn’t quite there. What alternatives can you recommend? PHP is where I am leaning.
Thanks.
Edit: Given my unclear query, I have struggled themeing. It has always been a pain and for whatever reason, documenting is somewhat unclear.
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Anything supporting an SQLite database would technically be a “flat-file” CMS… just saying. ;)
And if you’re going to be the only content manager, why not go the SSG way with Hugo, Jekyll, etc.?
Explored them previously, and today as part of my research, but would not work for my current situation. Hugo in the future though may be a potential move.
Voted “Best Flat File CMS” in 2017, 2019, 2020 & 2021
It might be hard to find something as good as Grav, but good luck.
Edit: start here maybe? Really not sure what you’re looking for. Grav really seems to cover pretty much every scenario.
The reason why I picked it was the 2021 award and the previous awards. However themeing has been a pain point for me. Given that my story site is picking up steam, I want to start making it look better and I am still struggling with themeing. Automad themes well, but does not have the plugin/modules I need.
I used WordPress (the self hosted one) and Drupal. They were both fine for my needs. I’ve never used Grav, so I’m not sure how it compares. As for making it look better, I think it’s more important to the user that the site is usable and easily navigate-able. I know those were the main things I looked for in niche sites. Of course I preferred that they didn’t look like they were plucked out of 1999, but as long as I could easily find what I was looking for, I didn’t care that much. I guess what I’m trying to say, is that I hope you find exactly what you’re looking for, and that your users appreciate you for your efforts on that front, as well as the content itself : )
I have used both WordPress and Drupal and they are pretty good. I leaned towards Drupal more, for its flexibility. Grav is superb for my needs. Lightweight, fast, very few requirements, its the best platform to use for what I am doing. However, for all those benefits, there are limitations, and to me, themeing and documentation are a pain. However, it is the best flat file CMS hands down.
After using GitHub Pages (Jekyll) and some experiments with GRAV and Serendipity/S9Y, I’ve ended up with WordPress on SQLite for my blog as it provides everything a proper blog needs: RSS, comments, trackback/pingback, spam filter and ActivityPub/Fediverse integration.
But for a CMS without any social aspect I’d probably use GRAV and make it work somehow.
This seems to be the way. Panel beating Grav. Dang. Wish it were more friendly, but still much respect to the development team.
From a technical standpoint, I still have some admiration for ProcessWire which is basically just the backend of a CMS and requires you to code the frontend. It has a great API and is awesome to build websites with. Just create your HTML and insert the PHP snippets wherever you need some dynamic info.
However, it requires a fully fledged database which is what I’m trying to avoid with most of my projects.
Might be more helpful if you mention what you’re looking for that Grav and Automad don’t cover. There’s a lot of options out there, and you seem to be looking for something pretty specific.
I am struggling with themeing.
In that case, as someone else said, you may want to take a look at some non-CMS specific style frameworks like Hugo or Jekyll who have tons of these available, but it might be a bit hard to say if you’re not super familiar with markdown for templates and such.
If you’re used to drag and drop and selectors for creating your views, may want to stick with the CMS stuff.
