RCD 2.0 (Part Two)

(Photo by Cedric Letsch on Unsplash)

It's a month since I resumed work on this blog/website in the aftermath of successfully concluding my latest contract engagement. I'm also putting time into revisions and updates to several other portfolio websites, which I will be showcasing in future blog posts.

This is a good inflection point for trying to determine what's working, what isn't, and what could be working better. If nothing else, it gives me an opportunity to further reflect on the platform decisions and fit-for-purpose considerations that started this blog in the first place.

At that time, I had launched this as a WordPress site while simultaneously developing a portfolio piece on a CMS platform I had, at that time, recently discovered: Concrete CMS. In the last month, I made the decision to migrate this site to Concrete as well. That decision is what I want to talk about today.

It's not a trivial decision. Blogging is what WordPress was developed for in the first place, and very few platforms match it out of the box for that use case. As a content management system, on the other hand, it suffers from bloat issues that remind of why Linux, not Windows, is my daily desktop driver.

Recent improvements have, in my view, dramatically increased Concrete's viability as a blogging platform. Replicated the exact experience of a WordPress blog in Concrete is probably doable– but why bother? If a WordPress blog is what your client is looking for… given them what they want.

But that's not what I want. And in this instance, I get to be my own client.

Over the last year that I have been working on a Concrete-based project I'm hoping to soon be able to push into production, I've been able to turn my general high-level knowledge of CMS systems into some very specific knowledge and expertise with Concrete. I'm nowhere near people who have been working with the platform for decades, but I'm feeling fairly good about offering Concrete-based solutions to business clients.

As I mentioned when I started this blog, there are no perfect platforms– particularly in the CMS space. There are always trade-offs, always things different platforms excel at, as well as limitations. A key component to successful digital asset creation and management is being able to quickly and correctly assess what those trade-offs are while a project is in discovery/planning – not when you are trying to take an asset into production.

Expect more on this subject soon.

Cheers,

--MM