Time to move away from my previous CMS. Joomla is getting more and more commercial, open source plugins start lacking (other than the "free" underpowered version of commercial ones) and I'm getting sick to update the template I was actually using (Purity III) to match the new Joomla version, to find out there are many little things to be fixed and changed.

I looked around months ago to find out a substitute, considering my requests are quite simple, looking for:

• PHP/MariaDB (or PHP/flat files, possibly markdown)
• some template available, that I like and can eventually modify
• commenting system
• actively maintained
• open source, better if GitHub presence

I ended up to this list:

• WordPress
• Pico CMS
• Grav
• Kirby
• HTMLy

Every one had advantages/disadvantages, and I made some considerations, not excluding changing my mind after some months ;-)

Wordpress

That was my first try - PHP/MariaDB, extremely popular, full of plugins. I had a two weeks test, and the learning curve (starting from my knowledge base) was too steep. Plugins are mostly free underpowered versions, theming overcomplicated (from my point of view). After two weeks, I had enough and tried Grav.

Grav

Grav is a flat file CMS. I really liked the idea to ditch MariaDB and just rely on PHP - the site could be easily moved from one server to another just copying files. Has a large plugin base, and uses Twig for templating. However, it tasted overcomplicated, and I had some issues with the Admin Panel plugin - after just a couple of days I decided I needed something much simpler, with a minimal admin panel, and content handled as markdown files. After a little Googling, I discovered Pico CMS.

Pico CMS

Simple, fast, minimalistic. Everything I needed, templates used Twig. Within some hours I had a nice template, and I wrote a minimal commenting system (yes, easier to write one than integrate some plugin from other CMS, and I don't like to integrate external services: whats in the CMS, stay in the CMS). Also, Pico CMS had an integration plugin for Nextcloud, and that was the part I mainly liked. However:

• the plugin wasn't wokring in newer Nexcloud releases
• after some months, Pico has been discountinued :-(

Kirby

I already encountered Kirby while messing around with Grav - I discarded it without installing due to its licensing system.

HTMLy

This one looked promising - simple and actively mantained, PHP with flat files markdown, contect structure easily understandeable and just old style PHP/HTML templating (no Twig). A few very simple themes (but Occasio theme was what I was looking for), decent documentations, no plugin (and at this point, I was starting to enjoy that - plugins are evil). I had a look, and I gave it a try. I really liked it, so I wrote a very simple commenting system (it integrated Facebook and Discord, but I hate relying on external services) and my own template (starting from Occasio, tweaking some parts and integrating the commenting system).