Backdrop CMS and WordPress are both content management systems (CMS), but with different philosophies, histories, and they each offer distinct user experiences. In this article, we will outline some of the key differences between the two platforms, covering aspects such as usability, functionality, community, security, performance, and flexibility with data.
1. Origins and Philosophy:
Here is a list of all current contrib themes with screenshots of how these themes look right now on a fresh installation of Backdrop CMS with the new front page display. This is before the theme developers have had time to make adjustments.
Themes are listed from the most used themes on top to the least used themes at bottom.
Simplo runs on Backdrop CMS and is highly grateful to and supportive of the Backdrop CMS community. We recommend that anyone with an interest in Backdrop CMS try to make time to attend at least a few discussions at the upcoming Backdrop LIVE on March 11-13. Even better, add your own topic of interest to the schedule. All you need to do is be willing to host and facilitate the discussion.
During registration you will be asked for a suggested donation of only $20, however any amount is acceptable. Mostly, we just want you to participate.
The Simplo team will be hosting or assisting with the following topic discussions
In deciding on a CMS, the availability of ready to use themes is an important factor for lots potential users that don't have the time or skills to create their own. One of my own concerns about Backdrop CMS when I first got involved in the community was the limited number of ready to use themes for folks just looking to build a personal website. However, over the last two years the situation has improved a great deal with a number of really nice new themes and more on the way.
Here is a quick run down of the top 10 themes, in terms of usage, for Backdrop CMS as of November of 2021.
But before we get started, let's clarify a few things.
During the initial release of Backdrop CMS a number of Drupal 7 modules or features were removed as a part of the fork because they were not consistent with the goals and philosophy of the project. One of these items was the PHP module, which allowed users to execute PHP code through the user interface. This has always been a controversial module because of the security implications and the Backdrop community decided that having this module in core was an unnecessary risk for users that might not understand the implications of enabling it on their sites.
Here is a StackExchange discussion on why it's a bad idea to use this module.
There was a question in the forum today about, if I understand the question correctly, how to use Taxonomy Terms to navigate a site and find content using Backdrop CMS.
(Here is a screencast of me working through the options in this blog post).
This blog post is a slightly edited version of the video transcript.
Backdrop CMS is a powerful and flexible tool for building a wide range of websites, from very simple sites to very complicated sites. Whether or not Backdrop is right for your project depends upon your specific needs and your skill set.
One of my favorite things to do with Backdrop CMS is create a dynamic map showing multiple addresses pulled from bits of content that are stored in the website database. The source of the map data could be posts, events, profiles, etc. This tutorial is to help in situations where you want a map that is dynamically updated as you add or edit the content on your site.
The following instructions are written for use with the Simplo Starter Kit, but can be adapted to any Backdrop CMS site. The Simplo Starter Kit comes with all the modules you need available. If working with your own code base you may need to download and install these modules separately.
In this weeks class on How to Build a Website with Backdrop CMS, we talked about contributed modules for Backdrop CMS, what is available and how to select the right module to suit your needs. Here are some notes from this weeks class.
Some useful definitions:
Backdrop CMS core - Backdrop CMS core is what you get when you download Backdrop CMS directly from BackdropCMS.org without adding any contributed modules, layouts, or themes. The base Backdrop package, without modifications, is referred to as Backdrop CMS core.
We just made a new tutorial video on using Layouts in Backdrop CMS core.
Here are some notes to go with the video.
Backdrop CMS sites are dynamically built. This means that individual pages don’t actually exist until a user clicks on a link in a web browser and requests that a specific page be rendered (or displayed to the user in the browser).
At that point, Backdrop CMS pulls together all the latest content needed to build that page, finds the relevant layout expected for that page, places the appropriate content in the right regions, and then finally sends all that information to the browser for the browser to display.