Hello community,

I am looking for a system to replace wordpress.

My goal is to build a webpage with a simple start page, an ‘about me’ and an impressum, so nothing special, but hopefully good looking.

I only use open source software, FOSS whenever possible. I have a rough understanding of some HTML, CSS, PHP, but I am happy if my future webpage doesn’t rely too heavy on my knowlege of those languages.

Wordpress feels very over the top and not many things work out of the box - you have to pay for premium products if you want a functional page, that doesn’t look exactly like twenty twenty-two. I wanted to move my wordpress site from one host to another host… Not easy, unless you pay for a plugin of course.

Now I found ModX, a CMS which looks like it is much less clunky, has more free ‘plugins’ and it looks quite intuitive with it’s folder structure.

My questions:

  • Has anyone used both CMS and can compare them based on their personal experience?
  • What CMS or other way do you prefer to build your simple webpage (FOSS only version)?

Edit: Thank you all for great recommendations and for sharing your experience! I learned: A full CMS is overkill for my usecase. Other, more suitable options, are:

  • Flat-file CMS (Grav, Automad,…)
  • static-file-generators (Hugo,…)
  • Emacs-org-html-export (…)
  • Build from scratch with html and css
  • harsh3466English
    6·
    9 months ago

    You might like Grav. It’s open source, a lot lighter weight than Wordpress, and you don’t need to know css, html, etc…

    I started messing with it a few days ago and so far it’s pretty nice.

    edit: removed open source redundancy

    • Handles@leminal.spaceEnglish
      3·
      9 months ago

      Is Grav still peddling their premium version all over the back end and support site? That turned me off their software ~5-6 years ago but I guess you could just not install the admin plugin…

      Edit: “Grav”, not “Grab”…

      • harsh3466English
        2·
        9 months ago

        When I was testing, I didn’t really notice it being overly obnoxious when I was logged in to the admin web ui. I wasn’t paying too much attention to that aspect of it since I have no intention of paying for premium. They may have toned it down since that kind of thing turns me off as well and I tend to notice if it’s egregious.

      • harsh3466English
        1·
        9 months ago

        Slow as a web server? I’ve only poked around it a little bit, the very little I did felt responsive, but I put no real load on it.