Vision

Build a web for the greatest good 

We're making communication tools for the future, and we want the tools to express ideas online to be accessible to everyone. Imagine if pen and pencil were only available to those who could spend thousands of dollars on them? Alternatively, imagine if your phone was free, but every 20 seconds your conversation was interrupted by an ad referencing something you just said. This is the future we'll live with if the only choices for CMS are closed source commercial systems. This is why Concrete is, and always will be, free and open source. 

A balanced solution

A content management system (CMS) is the tooling that developers and content contributors share to communicate ideas to the world. We strive to keep the balance of needs between a developer and a content contributor central in every decision we make.

Many CMS's were designed by developers, for developers. Building and maintaining a site with them can be pretty complex and intimidating for someone who can't program computers. To make changes you're typically working with long web forms in a "back-end." Adding new functionality is something you'll need some technical know-how to pull off. Imagine having to call a consultant every time you wanted to write a new Word document. How useful is that to your business?

Conversely, there's a number of web builder solutions that are geared for the DIY market. These tools work great for building a small site quickly. Some of the same assumptions and limitations that make them easy to get started quickly end up limiting what you can really build and keep together over time.

With Concrete, you get the best of both worlds. Anyone can start making their own website in seconds, and the editing experience is easy; just click on what you want to change. Developers still get a flexible and robust framework for building sophisticated web applications. Years later, site owners will still be able to make changes and additions on their own with very little training and no intimidation. 

Imagine the ease of a web builder with the robust features of a mature development framework and you have Concrete CMS. 

If you're excited, read how you can get involved.