Choosing a CMS or Framework
PEANUT has previously been used with Drupal, Concrete CMS, earlier versions of WordPress and a custom framework we call Nutshell. This adaptation, called Peanut Gutenberg, is for the latest WordPress versions, 6.9 and 7. Currently the preferred platform for user maintained PEANUT sites is Concrete CMS. However, WordPress offers some advantages. Let’s compare:
| Concrete CMS | WordPress | Nutshell |
| Feature rich and easy to use. | Well known and widely supported. | Nutshell – Lightweight and flexible |
| Easy for users to maintain | Easy for users, but not as much as Concrete CMS | Not maintainable by users. Development experience required. |
| Variety of features included in core product | Minimal features included in core product. | PEANUT features only |
| Good “add-on” availability. | Very rich “add-on” availability. | |
| Available themes: good. | Available themes: excellent. | |
| Development support – good | Development support – excellent |
The short version is that WordPress is the most popular and supported CMS in the world. If you prefer it, we are making PEANUT right at home in the environment.
Concrete CMS is less familiar but is stable and easier to maintain by non-technical users.
WordPress does not have much to offer in the way of features “out of the box” but has a huge variety of available plug-in packages. Concrete CMS comes with many built-in features that WordPress lacks without plug-ins. Several basic features and far more sophisticated in Concrete CMS: user and permissions management, caching, menu and sitemap control, development features.
However, many prefer the spare foundation of WordPress with the freedom to choose plug-ins to fill the gap. It must be warned that dependence on too many add-on features can get complicated and make upgrades difficult.
Nutshell is not a CMS and is little more than a framework for PEANUT. It can be used stand-alone or as an extension to other CMS systems and website builders.
Current working examples are:
- Concrete CMS:
- Friends Meeting of Austin (https://austinquakers.org)
- South Central Yearly Meeting (https://scym.org)
- Two Quakers, Terry and Liz (https://home.2quakers.net)
- Nutshell
- Terry’s songs: (https://terrys-songs.net)
- Terry’s Music Pages, in development (https://music.2quakers.net)
- Quaker Call, as an extension to their GoDaddy web builder site. (https://quakercall.org)
- Peanut documentation site (https://peanut.2quakers.net)
- WordPress
- Just this site for now.