October, 2006
WSCraft is a commercial Content Management System (CMS) aimed at web designers without programming skills looking for an easy-to-use yet powerful platform that features just about everything a small-to-medium site could need.
Although most of the CMS hype has been caused by free open source software, I have personally been disenchanted by just about every open source CMS out there for one reason or the other. Once a developer realizes the real costs of working with conflictive "free" technology, the idea of purchasing a commercial solution begins to make a lot of sense. WSCraft is one of those reasonable options.
Installation
A common deal breaker with most CMS is the steep slope one must travel from the moment the software is ready to be installed to the point where it is actually working. The installation process for WSCraft is reasonably swift although I must highlight a few things:
- WSCraft requires the Zend Optimizer (free) to be installed on the server. Not all Apache-PHP servers out there have the Zend Optimizer installed, so it is possible you may need to hire a new host, or make the necessary changes if you run your own host.
- The installation script complains about some missing folders although it doesn't explain whether the software can run without them, nor deals with the problem. I also had some problems with the .htaccess file.
- Software activation is not voluntary and the admin panel will not run unless the activation process has been completed.
But all of those things are minor and forgivable. What really worried me was the site I saw once the installation was finished.
The Fresh Site
The demo site installed by default renders acceptably in IE and Firefox, but in the latter the menu pops out of its assigned column, breaking the otherwise clean layout. When I checked the source code I noticed it was not W3C complaint code (the W3C Validator found 62 errors for the home page, including the alarming lack of a doctype). Then I looked for WSCraft templates on the web, hoping to change the default one for something more usable, but my search returned no successful results; not that I would want to be using templates for my site, but if I have to go through the task of integrating my design into WSCraft, I wouldn't want to begin my work over bad code.
Features
WSCraft goes down to business with the features developers would expect and none of the useless stuff that usually clogs open source CMS. During my tests, the admin interfaced offered solutions for almost all I could think of that would be useful in real scenarios, with flexible menus, very flexible templating, and somewhat flexible modules.
WSCraft Ultimate features (among others):
- User management with security access groups
- Multilingual support
- Image galleries
- Visitors can post comments, rate pages and upload files
- Generation of RSS feeds from the content
- Online shop with many features, including integration with Paypal, 2CheckOut and Authorize.net
The set of features can be expanded through commercially available plug-ins such as:
- FAQ builder
- Online Poll Manager
- Mail List Manager
- Ad Rotator
WSCraft also provides support for customers interested in creating their own plug-ins.
Customer Support
The WSCraft site offers several ways to get support, including useful tutorial videos, a prompt forum and a ticket-based support system. The forum includes a 'before you buy' area where one can get answers to typical questions and see previous inquires. Support is one of the areas where commercial packages usually excel over open source alternatives, and WSCraft seems to have just the right type of support one would want from this kind of software. I personally got a priceless walkthrough of the features by one of the people that frequent the support forum.
Who is WSCraft for?
The WSCraft CMS succeeds at many things and in its own right it is much better than most open source CMS out there, but I can't say I agree with the way its marketing campaign presents the product. It repeatedly describes the end user as a "designer" in places where I would have used the word "developer" instead. It also prides itself in requiring no programming skills while occasionally mentioning that the "designer" would have to be fully versed in HTML and CSS.
Basically, WSCraft provides a well organized and intuitive interface that is easy to work with for designers (web developers) who know their HTML & CSS (or in turn have low expectations for the resulting pages), and removes the hassle of dealing with complex server side languages and databases. It should offer all the features necessary to power a small to medium site, with the possibility of extending its capabilities via commercially available plug-ins or by creating your own plug-ins to interact with their software (for advanced users).
Pricing
WSCraft Ultimate license for one website: $499.
WSCraft Ultimate bundle (license + 5 plugins): $649.
www.wscraft.com
Requirements:
Server runnning
- PHP 4.2 or above
- MySql 4.0 or above
- Zend Optimizer installed
Copyright (c) 2006, Jose Onate, All Rights Reserved
