Meet Payload: The WordPress Alternative for 2023 and Beyond

For most of the modern history of the web, if the average business owner wanted a standard website, the common response would be to use WordPress. Originally introduced as a platform to power blogs, WordPress has evolved into a full-fledged content management system (CMS) capable of building and maintaining websites of all shapes and sizes. It can be an E-commerce storefront, a marketing website, or a full blown web application. You name it, someone has built it with WordPress.

So what's the problem? Well to accommodate all that flexibility, WordPress has to include a lot of code to make it possible for the average use to configure the software to their unique needs. This results in websites that load slowly, and are often difficult to use for the average user anyway on account of their endless menus and confusing user interfaces (UIs).

Here at S'more, we want to offer alternatives. And if you need a CMS, you'll likely hear us recommend something you haven't heard of before: Payload.

What is Payload?

Payload is an open source CMS built for developers first. By default, it removes all of the configuration of your content from the user interface and leaves it only editable in the codebase. This results in a much cleaner, easier to use interface for you to ultimately manage your content. It also makes our lives easier, as there is no conflict between the custom code we write and some configuration or hidden setting somewhere in the UI.

Another key difference of Payload to something like WordPress is that Payload is considered a headless CMS.

Headless? That sounds scary.

While sounding graphic, headless is just a term to describe content that is managed on a separate website from where it is consumed. Think of it this way: You'll direct your users to visit www.myawesomewebsite.com. But you'll actually manage your content somewhere else, like admin.myawesomewebsite.com.

Why is that better? Well for one, it means the website your users visit doesn't suffer any performance consequences from loading code that it does not need. We'll be able to build that website to be as lean and fast as possible in order to keep your visitors happy.

It also opens up the possibility of omni-channel content. In most cases, you want your content to live on one place: your website. But what if one day you want to feature content on a brand new mobile application? Or even a secondary website? It's possible to do all of this without duplicating any of your work, through the power of a headless CMS like Payload.

What if I just really like WordPress?

That's fine! We cut our teeth on WordPress development, and we're happy to do it for you! The key to quality WordPress work, whether you use us or someone else, is to minimize the amount of plugins used to build the site. This isn't an exact science, and there are sure to be exceptions, but too often WordPress sites are built quick and cheap by stapling together a bunch of plugins and calling it a day. This may work for a week or a month, but eventually plugins need to be updated. And each update carries the risk of breaking something. Have 50 plugins powering your site? That means that many more risky updates required to keep your site up and running.

Look for agencies like S'more that offer custom WordPress development. We'll use a few key plugins that we know are solid just so we don't have to reinvent the wheel, but otherwise custom requirements will be met with custom code.

I'm still not sure what I need..

As part of our initial conversations, we'll discuss what content you envision for your site. We might discover that you actually don't need a ton of fresh content to address your audience, and that a fully static site might be right for you. Or we might find that every piece of text on your site needs to be fully editable at an instant to capture the moment, and we can deliver on that too, as well as everything in between.

The first step is a no obligation conversation, which we can start right here!