trying out concrete5 CMS

I’m giving a new CMS a try, this time Concrete5. The feature that really grabbed me (besides being written by Portland natives!) was the in-line editable website, so that a user can click exactly what they want to edit, and change that content right from there. Also, the same for adding new pages, and content direct from where they want to add it.

I think this solves a big usability problem with a lot of CMS systems, where a user is expected to understand the difference between a frontend and a backend. This isn’t a problem for myself—or other tech savvy users—but this division caused a lot of confusion for users in the past:

Them: I want to edit this page! Me: OK, click the “Login” link here, and now go to “Pages”, then edit this page… Them: Which one? I wanted to edit the “About” page. Me: Then go down the list, and select “Edit” under the “About” heading…

I think it gets far too confusing. For the average person, and inline edit makes so much more sense. Leave the back of the house to the persons configuring the app, not to the people using it.

I’ll see what I can come up with. I’m porting a static site that I worked on in the past over to it, to see how it goes. It’s got some unique things like different colors for different navigational paths that should be interesting to see if I can work into a concrete5 theme.