Concrete 5 is a Content Management System (CMS) that I love. Does it have its issues? Of course it does. They all do.

However, I find that It combines just the right amount of usability, capability and design options that I've found most clients need.

Here's a quick demo on how easy it is to edit content in context, as opposed to having make edits by going to a separate page. Not only that, you can create little sections filled with text or other features all over the page, on the fly. You can also move them around by dragging and dropping them. It pretty much works the way someone would expect editing a page to work.

There's also the Lerteco plug-in which makes things even easier for when clients only need make super simple edits to their site. All they need to do is sign in, then hover their mouse over what they what to edit, click the pencil icon, write and that's it!

Basic editing in Concrete and moving sections around

Creating a theme in 7 minutes

Take Away

Concrete 5 is a free open source CMS that's been around for years that I think is very easy to use and pretty much functions out of the box with easy form creation, free gallery plugins, slideshows, etc.

It's primarily run by a company out of Portland, OR and they make their money by taking a cut from paid plugins via a centralized marketplace. This isn't to say that there aren't quite a few free plug-ins/add-ons available, but it makes their business model more sustainable.

One of their more popular plug-ins is an ecommerce addon that runs for around $125 bucks. Install, put your payment info in and you're up and running for most situations. Unlike other CMS systems that utilize third party ecommerce addons, this one is practically guaranteed to work and survive new CMS version updates with minimal tweaking since it's made by the core team.

If they were ever to go away, Concrete is still updatable because it's open source and other people can easily take up the reins to continue development.