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DIY CMS vs Wordpress etc.
I have seen many discussions here questioning the fastest/tiniest CMS to even desperate attempts to speed up Wordpress installs.
I figured, why not take performance into my own hands and make my own CMS?
My CMS does not use Javascript etc.. only Java/Spring Framework with Thymeleaf and is extremely fast. Of course, it was made only for my own needs with no bloat.
Has anybody else done this? Thoughts?
Comments
If performance is critical to you, chances are that adding new feature will also be important. Adding a feature on WordPress is trivial, given the amount of plugin availability. That is just the opposite with a DIY CMS
That doesn't fit together...
New features are definitely important for me. However with my own system I particularly like the flexibility to create my own implementations!
Of course C/C++ is preferred
but Java really isn't thaaat slow. I wonder how Java compares to PHP speed-wise?
Does not use javascript but use java/spring
Current WordPress is fine for your needs bcz you will never reach the limit to actually need fast backend but
If you're going into that rabbit hole I recommend using one of golang frameworks (fiber, echo) and frontend reactadmin with the power of AI you can clone WordPress functionality in 5 days
CMS without JavaScript, rotfl.
I am using htmly for that, https://www.htmly.com/
If you are looking for SEO then wordpress is hard to beat.
I had used PHP in the past and recently stated re-coding all of my websites to Java spring boot backend with thymeleaf or react.js frontend.
Speed wise Java spring boot is slightly slower then PHP but security wise, Java is much better. Moreover, if you use react.js as frontend for Java spring boot, you "feel" it is MUCH faster as entire react.js runs in your browser.
Deployment wise, if you use lightweight java runtime libraries, they are much faster then php's interpreters...
Awesome thanks for the insight
I just ordered a javascript textbook so I can start learning. Thymeleaf is powerful but JS should be faster and nice to use.
I thought PHP interpretation overhead is significant enough to make Java faster as a backend. How did you measure performance?
Java is faster as a backend as long as you do not use too many external libraries, which is why my recommendation was to use Java backend with React.JS frontend.
Java spring boot w/ thymeleaf starts to bloat up very quickly once you start to add unoptimized external libs. In my case, I measured performance based on "processing time" for a set of requests that I needed. The time was measured using the response time that is shown on firefox's "Network monitor". Do note that all of my java requests were routed through a nginx reverse proxy providing https and routed through tomcat server (spring boot default webserver). I used thymeleaf as React.JS is time consuming to code so would rather wait a milisecond extra every time rather then waste days on React.JS frontend.
As for optimizations that i used to mitigate these issues:
1. created most of my own libraries or use official libraries only (rather then premade libs on github by others which may not be optimized).
2. Multithreaded the app so things that can run in background, gets pushed to background thread rather then making the user wait for the process to complete.
3. Used javascripts to submit forms so user do not have to see a page load.
4. Enabled caching on nginx reverse proxy I was using anyway to prevent asset loading requests.
So yes, you can make the java backend work faster then PHP with very little effort, which is the reason I am recoding my PHP sites in Java Spring Boot as I mentioned above. If Java was inferior, I wont be putting in the effort.
They do not agree that PHP is to much overhead.
I don't believe they run plain nginx+php-fpm either
Businesses will continue to use WordPress because it's tested, tried, and true. It scales very well, and works well with multiple editors/writers and a lot of content.
Businesses don't give a single fuck about how much resources it uses when the blog is bringing in tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. Pay WP Engine whatever they want, write it off on your taxes, and forget about it.
I don't really see the point in making your own CMS, there's way too many options already. For a simple blog, just use Markdown and https://astro.build.
in the beginning it all looks great and feels accomplished.
but as days goes by....we want better SEO, a tool to check whether out content has good choice of important keywords or not, an rss feed, share buttons, a contact form, a category page or new taxonomy page....endless
i really don't like using wordpress but many of my friends end up using wordpress because it is easy and gets running in minutes, infact i do use it for blogs.
the fact is...wp ecosystem is soo great, want a new feature...most probably you get a plugin, want to change layout completely...just install a new theme or look at theme options and you can customize it like anything.
when we want to go deeper customization, i hate wp a lot but thats not for everyone.
also, if you want to use it for your own blog needs, your solution should work but working with clients and implementing new features...it is better to use wp kind of things.
btw...if you want to build a CMS or a good website... astro is really really good choice.
it is best of both worlds.
Obviously a diy cms won't ever be on the same level as wordpress :P but I do think it could be fun for hobbyists
Java is actually quite fast for what it is (bytecode interpreter) but it's still a massive resource hog by definition, so while it might be reasonably fast (well as long as java isn't started per call but rather handles requests directly - maybe reverse proxied by nginx) avoiding bloat is something that's practically not possible in Java.
If you believe you can handle security, sure.