October CMS Review: October CMS vs. WordPress & Others

WordPress is certainly the overwhelming favorite when it comes to content management systems. However, October certainly deserves consideration, especially given its rapid rise in adoption over the past 12 months.

• Popular Options
• Skyrocketing Upstart
• Why Use It, Though?
• From Consideration to Action

Popular Options

Looking for a content management system (CMS)? WordPress is, of course, incredibly popular. As of December 2, 2015, 43% of websites in the Alexa top 10 million use a CMS, according to W3Techs. Of those that do have a CMS installed, here is the market share for the top ones:

• WordPress – 58.7% market share
• Joomla – 6.5%
• Drupal – 5.0%
• Magento – 2.9%
• Blogger – 2.7%

Just look at those statistics, and you can immediately understand why we hear “WordPress” so much. However, there are literally hundreds of other options. Among those hundreds, one of them stands out in particular: October.

Skyrocketing Upstart

First of all, like WordPress, Drupal, and Joomla, October is free and open source – so it is on par with the popular systems in that way.

In terms of usage numbers, it is the diametrical opposite of WordPress. While the latter has an almost monopolistic presence of the market, October is used by under 0.1% of sites. Throughout this year, though, its adoption rate has risen four-fold, increasing from just under 0.001% of users in January to just over 0.004% of the pie in December (per W3Techs).

Furthermore, while October may have a tiny number of users in comparison to the big-name choices, it ranks second in terms of the amount of traffic handled by its average site. Although Drupal is substantially in the lead in that category, October edges Magento, Blogger, and WordPress, while Joomla lags behind.

Why Use It, Though?

What specifically is turning heads and getting this Laravel-PHP-based, object-relational mapping (ORM) system so much attention? Here is how it excels:

Static file system

The file render is one-for-one, which lowers the strain on your database and results in fast page loads – making caching unimportant, according to Chad Strat of plugin developer Radiant Web.

Note that some plugins do use the database dynamically, though.

Clean, user-friendly UI

It’s nice to work with a system that is well-designed and intuitive, and that’s true of October, explains Strat. “Moving around from pages to partials to content as well as adding plugin components feels very natural,” he says (http://goradiantweb.com/blog/post/five-reasons-consider-october-cms-your-next-site/). “In fact, you could theoretically bypass your IDE all together considering October’s ultra-clean markup editor.”

Simplicity

At its essence, October is stripped-down and straightforward. You can add extensions to boost your power if you want, but the basic workflow is decidedly uncomplicated.

Playing with the code is a snap, notes Strat. For content, components, and parcels, use a Twig syntax that can be rearranged simply by copying and pasting. If you have never used Twig, it’s easy to pick up.

Plus, since you are interacting with files rather than a database, you can use the built-in editor interchangeably with your integrated development environment (IDE).

Themes are quick, too. You can immediately convert whatever HTML theme and decide whether you want a more basic or more dynamic layout.

Power

October allows you to extend plugins or create new ones without having to deal with all the installing and uninstalling. You just add files. The ORM handles the dirty work.

Assumedly, this streamlined process is one of the reasons that October is rising so quickly in the ranks, notes Strat. “While developing some of our products, we found October’s API to be extremely well documented,” he says. “[C]ombined with Laravel’s well-documented API, we have been knocking out entire applications in just a day or two.”

Regular Updates

This CMS is open source, and sometimes that raises a yellow flag in terms of support. However, the primary October coders, Aleksey Bobkov and Samuel Georges, have extensive expertise and strong reputations within the development community.

The pair of programmers was organized and responsive out of the gates, adding tools as needs arose, from the alpha through the beta phases. Strat and his team were obviously floored by the smoothness of the process.

The care of the core team is evident throughout the ecosystem, says Strat, including the October Marketplace, “where every single plugin and theme is personally reviewed and accepted or rejected based on quality and effectiveness.”

From Consideration to Action

As indicated above, WordPress is so big that it is almost synonymous with the concept of a CMS. However, the growth of October – along with the strengths listed above – suggests that it could be similar to Nginx (the streamlined Cloud Server that is steadily gaining ground on IIS and Apache).

Would you like to test October or jump in and get started? Just as the CMS itself is geared toward simplicity, so is our Cloud Hosting.  By using our One-Click App Hosting, your Cloud Hosting Server is running with October already installed in under 30 seconds.

If you need already have a server and need guidance on installing October on it, check out our helpful how-to’s on installing on Centos 7.2 or on Ubuntu 14 in our blog.

Cloud hosting is just one of the many hosting services offered by Atlantic.Net – We also offer dedicated, managed and HIPAA compliant WordPress hosting services. Contact us today for more information on any of our services!