PyroCMS 3 (Pre-Order version) vs Ocober CMS

October CMS has some amazing functionality but I didn't care for it. It barely extinguishes it self from the others imo. At the time I tested it it was in beta. Every update broke plugins and they pulled a lot of Laravel out. So in the end it's not something I would say replaces other CMS's that are proven and mature.

No opinion on pyro.

@jekinney Thanks for sharing your experiences with October CMS. It's beginning to look like I am gonna go with PyroCMS

Just in case anyone else stumbles across this:

• We left 100% of Laravel in Pyro and it's final 3.0 release is days away.
• It's been used already very heavily in production for tiny sites to massive applications.
• It's 100% open source and we've been doing the CMS thing since like 2007.
• Pyro 3 was created from the ground to not only save tons of time in development but also improve development quality.

The field types you mention is an important part of the bigger picture we call the Streams Platform - it helps standardize / structure / scaffold your site / application super quick.

Totally biased in saying, everyone should give it a spin ;-)

Been trying out PyroCMS now for a day or two. I have experience with most content management systems on the php side. The cms i have always ended up using is Modx. I tested October, but that was not my cup of tea at all. So went back to modx.

But after the test run, i have decided to switch to pyro finally. It reminds me a lot of Modx because the fields (modx called them template variables/chunks/snippets). I feel these are critical components in a CMS. Something that also October lack. I asked them about it before the stable release, but they had no plans to implement it (at that time at least). Pyro has this!

To be honest, i think Pyro would benefit a lot from spending some time on the documentation and tutorials. Because when you first jump in and start looking around, it feels a little bit daunting to start making your own custom stuff. But once you figured it out, its really super quick and easy. But helping newcomers to get over that initial step would most likely benefit Pyro. My advice would be looking at the Laravel documentation and how that is written with examples.

But the documentation is the only downside i have found. I would recommend you to choose PyroCMS as your go to CMS for your every need basically. I don't think you will be disappointed!

So, it has been a year or so since these posts were constructed. What is your impression of PyroCMS since that time? I am wavering back and forth between using Pyro vs WordPress.

Has the documentation improved? How about customization via themes?

@karaoak @Will @RyanThePyro

Hi! Documentation is improved, but still not 100%.

But as a CMS / Development platform it har grown a lot - with an ecommernce module being released in a month or two.

I honestly must say i really love it after a year, and i won't switch to anything else.

One of the reasons i love it, is how quick and easy it is to develop whatever you need. And the fact that, as a laravel lover, you recognise yourself and can get started developing directly.

More videos is also out there to help you out.

We have built many sites on it since last year. If you are interested, drop me a message and ill send you links.

We even rebuilt our own website on it :) https://pixney.com

How about customization via themes?

Pyro is the most customizable stuff, I ever seen before. Using of all the Laravel's container power, then the power of the PHP itself, make it able to you to do extending and/or overriding almost any class of the system right inside your frontend theme add-on.

Add-ons system, by its turn, forces you to use some kind of add-on for development. So it should be reusable from the start. You just can't go other way. @codedungeon

Just thought I'd chime in with another update as this still ranks high for PyroCMS vs OctoberCMS.

Where I work have started slowly adopting Pyro for some of our projects, and its potential is very clear - the streams platform is very powerful and flexible which is great.

The downside is still the documentation, it's sadly extremely patchy, and makes it a very time consuming task trying to figure things out. No doubt once you know it it'll be second nature but this big learning curve would be solved by real docs.

The most frustrating thing is that theres no structure to documentation at all. Some is posted as guides, some is posted in a docs section, theres no clear place you can go to submit pull requests improving them. Really it needs a decent documentation system, not a home baked one. Something like MkDocs would be ideal and would provide a much stronger base for people to contribute to. When you look at OctoberCMS (who are arguably Pyro's closest competitor) the documentation is absolutely amazing.

The whole pro situation also fees a bit poor value so have avoided that. $25 a month is expensive when you consider what October provides, and its much more active community. For $25 a month I'd be expecting some more in-depth addons, with roadmaps of what the updates will contain and when.

My view would be for your own projects, October should be considered first, and Pyro considered only if keeping to Laravel's structure is essential (although even then, October doesn't differentiate that much).

Don't get me wrong though. I do like PyroCMS very much, I just don't feel its maturing at a fraction of the rate you'd expect. The pricing of pro and very dead and half baked feeling of the website likely turns a lot of people off which is a real shame given how good the streams system is, and how dedicated to the project Ryan has been.

My (hopefully constructive) feedback to Ryan would be:

• Open the project up, make it easier to contribute to docs for a start, and get them organised.

• Ditch the home brew feeling of the site. It doesn't feel active at all. The lack of content, the very minimalist looking forum and docs being split all over the place needs resolving. Maybe have a chat with a few of the Laravel core guys such as Adam Wathan & Steve Schoger on what they'd recommend as this really is where you're losing the community aspect.

• Get some more free plugins released, and make it easier to contribute back. In the last 12 months I don't think I've seen a single free anomaly module added to the store, just little field types and things, which for 99% of people have no purpose.

I'm very much wanting to contribute with docs, modules, etc. But right now I don't even know where to start because of the minefield of inconsistencies.