The whole WordPress vs Graffiti thing seems to be running and running.
Unlike most of the posts and comments I actually don’t have a problem with anything Graffiti have done. If they want to make comparisons with WordPress then that’s fine. Equally if they want to point out that WordPress isn’t a CMS that is also fine.
The second point is debatable but in the way we tend to think of CMSs it has a significant chunk of truth to it. There are features you tend to expect in a CMS that are not in WordPress by default.
I do, however, think that WordPress has a massive advantage over Graffiti, but that is not to say that everything about WordPress is better. I am quite happy to concede that the Graffiti installation process may be quicker and easier, it certainly won’t be the first that is, and I think that there are features to the layout of the admin screens that look easier to use, and better laid out than WordPress.
I actually wonder how many of the commenter’s responses are religious, in the Mac vs PC sense, how much are straight up anti-Microsoft, because it runs on .Net (which is a very good platform) and how much are actually objective and well considered. Superficially it seems to tip slightly to the former.
I see Graffiti as an opportunity to learn. Just as I would recommend every PHP coder to give C# a try, I would suggest that anyone involved with WordPress tries out the alternatives, including Graffiti. At the very least it will give you an idea about the way problems are solved on the other side of the fence.
Cesar Serna has an interesting post with screenshots of the admin console; I plan to give Graffiti a try this afternoon, and I will update this post when I’m done.
I think it goes without saying that it is a bit much to expect a first beta to compare favourably with WordPress which is on version 2.3 and has a large community developing almost continuously for it. Having said that I must admit that my first instinct was of being slightly underwhelmed, which is to say I was expecting more.
Having investigated a little more though I wonder if perhaps that is a function of the apparent simplicity of the interface. I think it would be very easy to get started with this.
Something that I think will add to the, is WordPress a CMS or not?, debate is that Graffiti doesn’t seem to distinguish between pages and posts. What we would call a page is merely an uncategorised post.
I can see the logic of this as it means there is only one type of content; I don’t know whether brand new users, with no blogging experience, would find the page / post paradigm, or the uncategorized post filter easier to learn. I suspect the former, but I could be wrong.
One thing I do find slightly misleading about the marketing is the idea that you don’t need to know programming get involved. It is true that the template system doesn’t require knowledge of C#, or VB.net. This is a good thing but is semantics really.
Take a look at the following example, taken from the what is CHALK (the templating system it uses) page:
[php]
#if($where == "category")
#elseif($where == "tag")
#elseif($where == "search")
#else
#end
I’ll leave it to you to decide just how different this is from PHP, or C#
There are some things in Graffiti which can be learned from. For one thing there is greater assistance for modifying themes in situ. When you open a theme file from within the admin page you are presented with several dropdown lists of values. These are the equivalent of is_post, is_category, the_content etc and make it a more effective editing environment.
It also resolves the issue of permalinks on IIS. Permalinks are a problem on IIS for WordPress, and actually they are almost as much of a problem for Graffiti. Graffiti creates permalinks by actually creating directories. The page content is still drawn from the database, but when you navigate to a folder, you are actually opening the default.aspx file in that folder. I see no reason why some enterprising person couldn’t do precisely this for WordPress users that are using IIS. Perhaps they already have.
Finally, it does have version control. WordPress should have version control. It is perhaps the last real objection to WordPress as a CMS.
So is this an alternative to WordPress? Yes, it is. If you are want to use IIS, and in particular if you want to use .Net to extend your blogging platform rather than learn PHP, then of course it is.
Is it easier to use than WordPress? It depends on what you know. In some cases yes, it is. It feels nice to use, but there are no revolutionary advances here.
Is it a CMS? I think that it is just as debatable whether Grafitti is a CMS as it is whether WordPress is. Sure Graffiti has version control, but it doesn’t have pages.
Is it better than WordPress? No.
The most important thing about this is what it is and who it is for. WordPress is fantastic as a personal and small business platform. PHP has a very low barrier to entry and that encourages anyone to get involved. The same is not true for .Net. .net is better for business, and encourages a very structured approach.
Given the price tag I suspect Graffiti is not intended for personal use anyway and so there really isn’t much point in making WordPress comparisons. It will be a rare person who will swap from WordPress.
That was a great post. I will have to bookmark this site so I can read more later.
Richard,
I didn’t intend to compare .Net to PHP, but to itself.
The point I was failing to make is that PHP is great for personal projects and learning in very small increments due to its scripted nature. That means that anyone can just dive in.
In contrast to that .Net requires more setup and knowledge in order to get started and so is less suited to personal projets. So .Net, in my opinion, is better for business use than it is for personal use.
There are good reasons to use both PHP or .Net depending on circumstance and so I wouldn’t intentionally claim either is better.
I do my best to be objective as I believe there is too much bias around the ’sphere, but it really isn’t up to me to say whether I have succeeded or not.
How is .Net better for business?
You claimed in your post that .Net is better for business than PHP.
So, by extension, you are claiming that the Microsoft Windows platform and associated products are better (for business) than the LAMP platform.
So this exposes your bias.
My bias is towards LAMP.
I believe that Microsoft’s moon is waning and that open source software is taking us further than closed source ever will.
But I would be interested to discover why you feel that .Net is superior, in your opinion.
I tend to agree with your conclusion Andrew. Graffiti might be a solution for companies, but private use will likely suffer from the focus on .NET and the Windows platform.
I don’t like putting up numbers, but the majority of webhosts out there run some sort of Linux derivate which rules out Graffiti immediately.
Sure, currently it’s a Beta – but for something that wants to be “[...] a platform for helping you create and publish content.”, I miss a broader toolset to use. You can add pictures to your content – good. But like WordPress, this does not include managing galleries.
Single images might work in a common blog environment (only to a certain degree, as personal blogs might have a lot of private flavour – pictures of the kids growing up etc.) but supporting galleries is often a major plus.
I also miss support for videos. Make it a button that lets you browse for your favourite youtube clips or a real upload function.
Something I haven’t tried yet but was also unable to find on http://docs.graffiticms.com/ was the question whether or not Graffiti supports direct ADS authentification. That would – in a commercial environment – make Graffiti a more interesting candidate.
In the end, Graffiti is not yet worthy of beeing called an alternative to WordPress to me.
Thanks Miriam,
That was my feeling as well.
I think the most important distinction between the two is going to be .Net vs PHP, i.e. which you want to use, so no matter how good it gets I don’t think it is likely that people will switch on features.
Of course that goes for switching to WordPress as well.
Thanks for this refreshing and thorough review of Graffiti. It’s great to read a real review of the features and not just theory and opinions about what it might and might not be.
And I’m especially glad that you feel that it’s not better than WP, not because I worship WP, but because I’ve invested so much time in learning the ins and outs of WP, that if there was something better out there I’d feel obligated to learn it too. Now I can continue my exploration of WP.
Nice job!
Thanks Scott,
I do think it is a good product and competition is certainly not going to any harm to the existing options so I wish you the best of luck with it.
[Disclaimer: I work for Telligent and manage the Graffiti team]
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for the review and feedback.
While we are very confident in the product, as you mention it is still beta 1 and we have some nice things slated for beta 2 and the final release.
A couple of responses to your review:
* By default, we do treat posts and pages the same. However, if you add a new .view file called page.view it will be used to render the post. There is actually a pretty deep set of overrides which can be used to control how a single post/page is rendered. This is one of the areas we believe non-developers will find helpful since it requires no code to use.
* IMO, the #1 thing that makes chalk more appealing over C# (or PHP) is the lack of context switching. For the most part you can simply write HTML and then decorate it with chalk. With the exception of an if or foreach it is usually all very readable.
* As for the price tag, please note that Graffiti is free for personal use.
Thanks,
Scott