[Disclaimer: I work for Telligent and manage the Graffiti team]
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for the review and feedback.
While we are very confident in the product, as you mention it is still beta 1 and we have some nice things slated for beta 2 and the final release.
A couple of responses to your review:
* By default, we do treat posts and pages the same. However, if you add a new .view file called page.view it will be used to render the post. There is actually a pretty deep set of overrides which can be used to control how a single post/page is rendered. This is one of the areas we believe non-developers will find helpful since it requires no code to use.
* IMO, the #1 thing that makes chalk more appealing over C# (or PHP) is the lack of context switching. For the most part you can simply write HTML and then decorate it with chalk. With the exception of an if or foreach it is usually all very readable.
* As for the price tag, please note that Graffiti is free for personal use.
Thanks, Scott
Andrew Rickmann
· 1 year ago
Thanks Scott,
I do think it is a good product and competition is certainly not going to any harm to the existing options so I wish you the best of luck with it.
Miriam
· 1 year ago
Thanks for this refreshing and thorough review of Graffiti. It's great to read a real review of the features and not just theory and opinions about what it might and might not be.
And I'm especially glad that you feel that it's not better than WP, not because I worship WP, but because I've invested so much time in learning the ins and outs of WP, that if there was something better out there I'd feel obligated to learn it too. Now I can continue my exploration of WP.
Nice job!
Andrew Rickmann
· 1 year ago
Thanks Miriam,
That was my feeling as well.
I think the most important distinction between the two is going to be .Net vs PHP, i.e. which you want to use, so no matter how good it gets I don't think it is likely that people will switch on features.
Of course that goes for switching to WordPress as well.
Christoph Voigt
· 1 year ago
I tend to agree with your conclusion Andrew. Graffiti might be a solution for companies, but private use will likely suffer from the focus on .NET and the Windows platform. I don't like putting up numbers, but the majority of webhosts out there run some sort of Linux derivate which rules out Graffiti immediately.
Sure, currently it's a Beta - but for something that wants to be "[...] a platform for helping you create and publish content.", I miss a broader toolset to use. You can add pictures to your content - good. But like WordPress, this does not include managing galleries. Single images might work in a common blog environment (only to a certain degree, as personal blogs might have a lot of private flavour - pictures of the kids growing up etc.) but supporting galleries is often a major plus. I also miss support for videos. Make it a button that lets you browse for your favourite youtube clips or a real upload function. Something I haven't tried yet but was also unable to find on http://docs.graffiticms.com/ was the question whether or not Graffiti supports direct ADS authentification. That would - in a commercial environment - make Graffiti a more interesting candidate.
In the end, Graffiti is not yet worthy of beeing called an alternative to WordPress to me.
Richard Catto
· 1 year ago
How is .Net better for business?
You claimed in your post that .Net is better for business than PHP.
So, by extension, you are claiming that the Microsoft Windows platform and associated products are better (for business) than the LAMP platform.
So this exposes your bias.
My bias is towards LAMP.
I believe that Microsoft's moon is waning and that open source software is taking us further than closed source ever will.
But I would be interested to discover why you feel that .Net is superior, in your opinion.
Andrew Rickmann
· 1 year ago
Richard,
I didn't intend to compare .Net to PHP, but to itself.
The point I was failing to make is that PHP is great for personal projects and learning in very small increments due to its scripted nature. That means that anyone can just dive in.
In contrast to that .Net requires more setup and knowledge in order to get started and so is less suited to personal projets. So .Net, in my opinion, is better for business use than it is for personal use.
There are good reasons to use both PHP or .Net depending on circumstance and so I wouldn't intentionally claim either is better.
I do my best to be objective as I believe there is too much bias around the 'sphere, but it really isn't up to me to say whether I have succeeded or not.
Speed Up PC
· 1 year ago
That was a great post. I will have to bookmark this site so I can read more later.
All Comments
Hi Andrew,
Thanks for the review and feedback.
While we are very confident in the product, as you mention it is still beta 1 and we have some nice things slated for beta 2 and the final release.
A couple of responses to your review:
* By default, we do treat posts and pages the same. However, if you add a new .view file called page.view it will be used to render the post. There is actually a pretty deep set of overrides which can be used to control how a single post/page is rendered. This is one of the areas we believe non-developers will find helpful since it requires no code to use.
* IMO, the #1 thing that makes chalk more appealing over C# (or PHP) is the lack of context switching. For the most part you can simply write HTML and then decorate it with chalk. With the exception of an if or foreach it is usually all very readable.
* As for the price tag, please note that Graffiti is free for personal use.
Thanks,
Scott
I do think it is a good product and competition is certainly not going to any harm to the existing options so I wish you the best of luck with it.
And I'm especially glad that you feel that it's not better than WP, not because I worship WP, but because I've invested so much time in learning the ins and outs of WP, that if there was something better out there I'd feel obligated to learn it too. Now I can continue my exploration of WP.
Nice job!
That was my feeling as well.
I think the most important distinction between the two is going to be .Net vs PHP, i.e. which you want to use, so no matter how good it gets I don't think it is likely that people will switch on features.
Of course that goes for switching to WordPress as well.
I don't like putting up numbers, but the majority of webhosts out there run some sort of Linux derivate which rules out Graffiti immediately.
Sure, currently it's a Beta - but for something that wants to be "[...] a platform for helping you create and publish content.", I miss a broader toolset to use. You can add pictures to your content - good. But like WordPress, this does not include managing galleries.
Single images might work in a common blog environment (only to a certain degree, as personal blogs might have a lot of private flavour - pictures of the kids growing up etc.) but supporting galleries is often a major plus.
I also miss support for videos. Make it a button that lets you browse for your favourite youtube clips or a real upload function.
Something I haven't tried yet but was also unable to find on http://docs.graffiticms.com/ was the question whether or not Graffiti supports direct ADS authentification. That would - in a commercial environment - make Graffiti a more interesting candidate.
In the end, Graffiti is not yet worthy of beeing called an alternative to WordPress to me.
You claimed in your post that .Net is better for business than PHP.
So, by extension, you are claiming that the Microsoft Windows platform and associated products are better (for business) than the LAMP platform.
So this exposes your bias.
My bias is towards LAMP.
I believe that Microsoft's moon is waning and that open source software is taking us further than closed source ever will.
But I would be interested to discover why you feel that .Net is superior, in your opinion.
I didn't intend to compare .Net to PHP, but to itself.
The point I was failing to make is that PHP is great for personal projects and learning in very small increments due to its scripted nature. That means that anyone can just dive in.
In contrast to that .Net requires more setup and knowledge in order to get started and so is less suited to personal projets. So .Net, in my opinion, is better for business use than it is for personal use.
There are good reasons to use both PHP or .Net depending on circumstance and so I wouldn't intentionally claim either is better.
I do my best to be objective as I believe there is too much bias around the 'sphere, but it really isn't up to me to say whether I have succeeded or not.