Saw the announcement for V3 of Alloy. I wasn’t really interested when it was first announced so I haven’t really followed along. But curious what the environment is now and what V3 brings.
Any reviews?
How about use cases? Is it strictly a blog or are people using it the same way that others have repurposed total CMS?
It looks pretty and does a reasonable job of duplicating the popular Ghost blog free theme from what I saw. I believe it also has a way to add some CMS capability but I didn’t spend much time checking it out. However, the devil will be in the details of what can be configured and what can’t, and also how end users will like the edit UI.
AFAIK it is tied into Foundry so that would be a show stopper for non Foundry users. For the Foundry users who want simple and pretty, it’s probably ideal.
@jabostick This version has tons of improvements. The online editing experience is sooo enjoyable.
With the addition of embeds and droplets (plus blog posts) this makes it a very versatile tool. It can’t do all the things that Total CMS can do, nor was it meant to. But it is a super simple way to add images, repeating text, and “areas of content” to your regular pages (if you want). Bottom line: it’s making my life much easier for updating content.
Obviously a lot of nice improvements regarding blogging itself.
What specifically can’t it do that TCMS can?
@alixnotes Specifically I don’t know. I don’t have Total CMS. But I do remember Total CMS has other features. As long as you only want to deal with text and images then Alloy will be great with embeds or droplets.
… but Total CMS allows you to do other stuff. I’m sure a quick perusal of the relevant webpage will let you know those other things.
In my case allowing for web-based editing of blog, plus text content, plus images … well that’s quite wonderful and all I need.
I use TCMS regularly and Im not sure that it does have more facilities. It does have (now) several fields for Title, Tag, Category, Author et al but Im not sure what else it can do over what I assume that Alloy can now do. Not conversant yet with Alloy, but I intend to give it a run thru.
The price difference between the two for me could be a major factor if Alloy can do pretty much the same functions. TCMS is per site - a stinger!!!
@alixnotes Hmmm … perhaps I was wrong.
Yes, there’s a huge price difference. But even more important to me is how the web based editor works. Easy to navigate between blog, embeds, and droplets. Just a great user experience overall.
@alixnotes Let me how you find it. I can provide some more details about how I use it, and will going forward, once you’ve had a spin around the block.
I need to go through it in detail but, after looking at a bunch of tutorial videos, it would seem that, there’s a few differences with TCMS:
I’m hoping to look into a little bit more this weekend. There’s a specific job coming up that might have a blog component, which it seems fully capable of doing that well. I am curious though how it can be repurposed, though, as most clients don’t seem to have an interest in blogging, once they find out how much time it takes up.
as always: if you want a smoother out of the box experience and don’t mind less options and flexibility > go for foundry and the elixir stuff. If you want it the other way round > go for the workman stuff.
I tried hard to like one of these two better than the other - but I failed. It’s a decision on a case to case basis in my point of view.
A few things to add to what others have written about Alloy, now I have had chance to watch the videos.
because the “editor” is already built its much quicker to set up the admin side. I agree not as much flexibility as to what the editor/admin looks like but for me that’s not a bad point.
Also it is SO much easier to see how to do it all. IT took me ages to get to grips with TCMS, but Alloy is “simples”
I like the addition of droplet and embed and the easy of getting them into a project file. And as I said with the price point being so different for me Im certainly going to try it out with my next two projects.
I agree not as much flexibility as to what the editor/admin looks like
Nearly. You can change the Logo and the Background in a picture, solid color or gradient.
This should be be enough. :-)
Yes you’re right it’s so much easier. More intuitive. I just built a site with TCMS, It’s great, but a lot more complicated.
Good explanation.