After many months in the making, long after-work hours, and countless cups of coffee; the new face of bedrichrios.com is finally finished. This iteration (version 3.0, if you are keeping track) brings with it, numerous changes. Firstly, it no longer makes use of the WordPress platform as its backbone system, but rather a much more lightweight CMS called Frog CMS. Secondly, the Blog portion from the previous iteration has been replaced by a new section titled Articles. Lastly, the focus and therefore structure of the site has changed in order to provide myself with more creative freedom over the layout and content.
Why Frog CMS Over WordPress
In a few words, I realized that my site was not solely a blog. Although, WordPress can be extensively customized and ultimately made to function similarly to any other CMS, it remains a blogging platform. In other words, I did not make the switch to Frog because I need something more (or less) powerful, but because I needed something different.
Blog, No More
Truth be told, I don't enjoy writing as much as I enjoy coding and designing. And by having a blog, I felt the necessity to write a medium to long blog-tutorial-format every single time I wanted to share some code, design thought, or something random I found in the internet. By switching from a Blog to an Article structure, I will try to write more frequently, so everyone wins :)
Freedom!!!
The main thing that attracted me to Frog CMS was its bare bones nature. Frog is a "simple and elegant CMS" but it also has the potential to be a great building block for a more personalized CMS; something that WordPress, in my opinion, does not.
So, What's Next
The first thing on my list is to fix any problems that may arise from moving the old WordPress blog over to v2.bedrichrios.com. Once that is done, I will move over to this side of the web and tweak any problems that the redesign might have brought with it. Finally, I will be looking in to adding some features and changing things around here. Please let me know if you find anything broken around here, I kind of rushed to the release of this new version of my site :)
7 comments
i'll have a try for frog
» jimmy Thu, 25 Jun 2009
I am currently moving from WordPress to Frog CMS myself for many of the same reasons you are. I love its simplicity and ease of use. If you like to tweak some code here and there, it's easy to do as well. What I love most is that it is light and fast. WordPress is just too slow and bloated these days, especially for blogging. I've tried and used about every CMS imaginable and bloat, performance, complicated modding are the main reasons I leave them all behind. Frog CMS is a delight so far. I should have my site live in a couple of days and am actually having fun with the redesign rather than fighting a CMS for a change. Great site by the way!
» Sean Thu, 12 Feb 2009
@Noel, @Ali - Thanks for the kinds words! You guys should definitely give Frog a try.
» Bedrich Tue, 10 Feb 2009
What an elegant site! One of the best I've seen so far. It's been sometime I was looking for a replacement for Wordpress. ExpressionEngine, Textpattern, etc. None of them seem to be as lightweight and flexible as FrogCMS. Your view however, makes me consider it even more. Thanks!
» Ali Tue, 10 Feb 2009
Nice site! I love the simple, open-ended design. It's rigidly structured without feeling bulky. I agree with you regarding WordPress. I have often utilized Textpattern instead of WordPress for sites that require a traditional IA. I'll have to give Frog a try since it's based on Radiant, a killer little CMS built with Ruby on Rails.
» Noel Hurtley Sun, 8 Feb 2009
@David Thanks for the wishes, glad you like the site :)
» Bedrich Mon, 26 Jan 2009
I was just trawling for Frog sites :) and Google brought me here. Very nice job! Best wishes with the new site!
» David Sun, 25 Jan 2009