Symphony CMS. Awesome.

21st May 2011

I just switched my site from Textpattern to Symphony CMS. I originally did not expect do that because I loved Textpattern and had absolutely had no issues or problems with it. However, being I, I ended up trying to build my site with Symphony CMS—just to learn it and check it out. Once I did that, I was too amazed by it to not use it.

Textpattern is Still Awesome

Symphony’s awesomeness doesn’t remove Textpattern’s awesomeness. Textpattern was the first CMS I actually understood and used well. Before that, I was still using static HTML and CSS files. Especially with Tag Builder, Textpattern makes it very easy for someone knowing nothing but HTML and CSS to make templates. I liked Textpattern enough to buy the Textpattern Solutions book. After reading it, I understood Textpattern much better and could probably make a variety of different kinds of sites using it. Textpattern is extremely flexible, and not tied to the “blog” set up of most sites.

Symphony is Simple

Symphony’s control panel is pleasant. There are no fields predefined, or sections, or anything unless you downloaded an ensemble. This is nice, because I don’t have to use Textpattern plugins to hide fields I don’t use. Nothing even outputs as XML, until you choose it to do so in a data source. As strange as it sounds, it feels like a futuristic version of Textpattern.

XML and XSLT

I had to learn the basics on XSLT and xPath to use Symphony CMS. To learn, I used W3Schools. For me, it was fun. Symphony helps tremendously with its Devkits that allow you to see the XML produced by your content, and test xPath. Although it’s a little harder to understand than Textpattern’s made up tags, in my opinion it’s better and more fun. Better yet, XSL is a W3C spec, so it’s following the standards.

Sections and Fields

There are many aspects of Symphony CMS, that I could blab on about, but I particularly like the way sections and fields are handled in Symphony. When you create a section, you choose the fields it will use to put your content. Therefore, every content is it’s own set of fields. Also, the field types are more useful than Textpattern’s custom fields. I find the “file upload” field very useful.

That’s All

I didn’t write about everything I possible could because Symphony CMS does it so well. The only way I completely understood Symphony CMS or Textpattern was by building a site with it. After using the Symphony CMS to rebuild Joytistic, I concluded that it is slightly better than Textpattern. However, TXP is still my second favorite CMS.