Getkirby vs wordpress which is best to choose?

The CMS Questions
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Hello All,

I am new in the web development world, currently working as a graphic designer at a web development company, I am learning about the new CMS platforms, I am filmier with the WordPress, Drupal and Magento but didn’t know about the kirby, can one suggest me the difference between the WordPress and the Kirby CMS. ?

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How WordPress is different from Kirby:

  • Requires a database (MySQL) in addition to the site’s files (PHP, uploaded images, etc.)
  • Gives you a working blog with posts, pages, commenting out of the box. With Kirby, you need to configure blueprints for your different page types, and add plugins or use third-party services for comments.
  • It has version history for pages and posts, out of the box; Kirby only achieves it with plugins (e.g. Kirby Revisions) which are not as battle-tested as this WordPress feature.
  • WordPress has many plugins for lots of things (Kirby has fewer), and WordPress plugins can be configured from the site’s admin pages (unlike Kirby which tends to require configuration in PHP).
  • It also has many themes, free or cheap-enough Premium themes, that you can use as a baseline for your work. The downside is that when you need to change things, you will need to change the theme’s templates and styles, and WordPress templating can be long and painful (though Drupal is worse IMO :P).
  • Needs to be updated frequently because it tends to have security issues and since there are MANY WordPress-based sites out there, attackers target WordPress sites all the time.

Kirby is mostly interesting for people who feel that WordPress, Drupal and others are way too big or bloated for their needs, and/or who favor more control over the output and site structure (at the expense of some coding and templating). It also enables you to create custom data structures easily, while WordPress requires a plugin like ACF for that.

Some designers do just fine with Kirby, but you get the most out of it if you can write decent PHP as well (so being a designer-coder or a designer-who-works-with-a-developer is best).

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Good summary by @fvsch
I think a big difference if your background is in design, is that with many CMSes (Wordpress, Drupal…) you can install and configure a site by just clicking around in the admin interface. Which can be good if you’re not good at or not interested in the tech side of things.

Kirby doesn’t offer that, by design. And it is one of the reasons I love it :wink: You have to configure things by editing files, and write at least some PHP in templates. If your needs are simple, you can go a long way with very simple code (variables and loops basically) and learn a lot through the docs and the Cookbook.

When you are new to Kirby, it is quite easy to take an existing design made of static pages, and make it a dynamic site.

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Kirbys backend the so called Panel is very intuitive and customisable. Most of my customers would hate wordpress backend, but they love the panel. 'nuff said.

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