Hold on! What’s a CMS (Content Management System)?
A CMS or Content Management System is software used to manage the creation and modification of digital content. CMSs are typically used for enterprise content management and web content management.
There are many CMS software applications on the market, and I had the opportunity during my 20 years of experience to work with CMS Builder, Joomla, Drupal, Typo3, ExpressionEngine and many others but I always returned to WordPress.
WordPress
Some 15 years ago, I started to work with WordPress, a PHP/MySQL driven blog system. Today WordPress has evolved into a fully-fledged CMS used by millions of websites online. WordPress works with themes and templates to give a website a nice layout. As a graphic designer (I’m not a developer), it was sometimes a pain to create a layout in WordPress without heavy coding knowledge, so most of the time, I just downloaded themes from ThemeForest, but after a while, I stumbled on shortcomings when using those pre-built themes.
Page Builders
A couple of years ago, WordPress page builders started to overflow the market. With a simple drag and drop system, you could build the layout of a WordPress website the way you liked it and without the need for pre-built themes or coding. Products like Divi, Beaver Builder and Elementor, to name only a few, entered the market. For a while, I was pleased with Elementor, but once again, I discovered that there are better alternatives.
A new generation of page (theme) builders
Oxygen Builder
By chance, I stumbled upon Oxygen Builder. Oxygen is also a page builder but has more potential than the builders mentioned above. It feels and behaves more like a theme builder; in fact, you don’t even need a pre-loaded theme anymore! With this system, you really work with the core of WordPress. In my opinion, at the moment, Oxygen, together with WordPress, is the best environment to build modern, fast and unique websites. What finally convinced me was the fact that Oxygen is free of bloated code compared to Elementor; this means it’s going to be a faster website.
Although Oxygen is a drag and drop way of building a layout, it’s recommended to know HTML and CSS. The basic concepts of PHP and Javascript are also necessary to have endless possibilities. For a starter, that can be a steep learning curve, but once you pass it, Oxygen will be a true relief for building your own website from the ground up without any restrictions.
So time to install WordPress and Oxygen Builder on the server!
To be continued…
