Contao VS winter

Another usecase are Framework based CMS System. Beside Drupal, Typo3 using example Symfony components, still are not Full Stack Symfony and don't use Symfony based folder structure and are so very different then using Symfony Full Stack based CMS. In this area other CMS like Sulu, Bolt, .. are placed which do not hide Symfony Full Stack and are more for the web applications which are not typical just a Website but has application based component in it which can be build with the Symfony components and ecosystem. This CMS are also mostly more version control friendly as most configurations are inside Code and not inside Database and the CMS admin concentrate on Content Management and configure the System itself. Another CMS which is more and more migrating Full Stack Symfony is Contao CMS, which definitly should not be forgotten.

If you're familiar with Symfony, you could also check out Contao. I never really used it, though, because it's a bit too complex for me. But in theory, you can use most libraries for Symfony there.

Maybe you have a look at CMS Conato: https://contao.org/

Beside Symfony there is Laravel Framework , I will not go into deep difference between this frameworks as it really is just taste of what your team likes more (active record vs datamapper, facade/helpers vs dependency injection, blade vs twig, ...), as already mention above this kind of CMS make sense if Website is just one part of your application and you have to build more then just a simple digital business card / website. In Laravel world there are CMS like October CMS / Winter CMS, which target the same providing a CMS based on the Full Stack Larave framework and give you all features of that framework. Another already mention CMS in Laravel world is Statmatic.

Chances are a lightweight CMS already exists. Winter CMS is one such option.

Or Winter CMS (https://wintercms.com/) ;)

As someone who dabbled in PHP but is mostly a self-taught JS hobbyist dev, I have been using and loving Directus (https://directus.io) since around the time they switched to Node. Development velocity is exceptional with new features released every couple of weeks and bugfixes/enhancements even more frequent, the community and core team is fantastic, and I like the fact that if I ever decide to switch to another CMS for some reason, there's no real import/export process, I just delete the directus_tables in my database, and done.

Pocketbase (https://pocketbase.io/) piqued my interest after seeing it here and on ProductHunt, but I don't think it would be the right call for a client before it hits a stable release.

I also very much enjoyed OctoberCMS (although it has its quirks), but there was a fairly acrimonious split in the community there, and OctoberCMS is no longer open source, and I haven't used the fork (WinterCMS: https://wintercms.com/)

I enjoyed using Apostrophe (https://apostrophecms.com/) for a while, but ultimately I felt like I was doing a lot of stuff in a way that didn't come naturally to me, and although Mongo seems a logical choice when you look at Apostrophe's page model, it worried me a bit that the data would not be easy to move if I ever wanted to.

I'm biased, but it might be worth taking a look at Winter CMS. It's built on Laravel, so you get everything you would with Laravel but it also has some pretty powerful features on top of what you get out of the box with Laravel. Its plugin system and extensibility is also second to none. It's different from a few of the other options though in that you don't add it to an existing project, you build your projects from the start in it.

Winter CMS is an open source fork of OctoberCMS. They've just put Laravel 9 support in place as well.

If you're looking at October I'd give Winter a look too (https://wintercms.com), October is no longer open source and Winter is the open source fork of October. (Disclaimer: I'm the lead maintainer for Winter CMS)

Winter CMS? Laravel based and very developer friendly! https://wintercms.com/

If you're thinking of using Bolt but would also like to have access to the power of Laravel, I'd recommend taking a look at Winter CMS (open source fork of October CMS, built on Laravel / Symfony): https://wintercms.com

Have you ever looked at Winter CMS? https://wintercms.com it's a CMS built on Laravel that's super easy to customize and add your exact needs to.