Introduction to Craft CMS

Craft is a database-driven CMS that makes it easy to build and manage content-heavy websites. It was originally released in 2013 by Pixel & Tonic, a web development company that got its start building commercial add-ons for the ExpressionEngine CMS.

Craft isn’t a website builder – you still need to be familiar with HTML and CSS to build the front-end layer of your website – but it is geared toward making both the development and authoring experience as great as possible.

You can see the features of Craft on the features section of the Craft website. There are videos for each main feature along with descriptions and screenshots. It’ll give you a good overview of the capability of Craft.

Craft Business Model

Craft is a commercial CMS, but there is a free option (called Personal License) so you can try out the software without any risk. Upgrading to one of the two paid licenses is simple via an in-app purchase right inside of Craft.

You can run the paid versions of Craft locally (e.g. craft.dev or mysite.dev) without purchasing, so you can experiment with the commercial features or work on a client site without needing to deal with licensing until the project launches (at which time you’ll need to purchase the appropriate license).

The licensing is as follows:

• Personal: Free
• Client: $199 per site
• Pro: $299 per site

The Personal license limits you to one user account and doesn’t include some other features. The Client license adds an additional client user, and Pro is unlimited users. All licenses include unlimited content sections, fields, etc. Read the pricing page for all the details on what is included with each license type.

Continue reading %Introduction to Craft CMS%

by Ryan Irelan via SitePoint