Decided to switch to a new CMS system for the company's website at the end of last year, asked for opinions in the technical group, and several people recommended AnQiCMS (AnQi CMS).I hesitated for a moment - after all, I was accustomed to using PHP CMS, and switching to the new system developed in Go language made me uncertain.In the end, I installed it with a try-and-see attitude, now I've been using it for a full three months, and I want to write down my real feelings during this time for friends who are also choosing.
First, let me talk about the place that surprised me
The server cost is directly halved
The company's website was running on an Aliyun 2-core 4G ECS, installed with WordPress, and the monthly server cost was about 200 yuan.After switching to AnQiCMS, I specifically changed to a lightweight cloud with 1 core and 2G, which costs only 68 yuan per month.The website speed is actually much faster than before- The homepage used to take 2-3 seconds to load, now it takes about 0.3 seconds to come up. The front-end and back-end operations are very smooth, with no lag at all.
Our company's website is mainly used to display products and publish articles, with an average daily PV of about 3000, this configuration is more than enough.If the traffic increases later, you can add an Nginx reverse proxy, and it can handle thousands of concurrent connections without any problems.
AI writing really saves time.
There is a product library in the company, just the specifications, application scenarios, and technical advantages of these contents alone, there are more than 50 product copywriting tasks to write.Before outsourcing to a writer, a product copywriting costs 300 yuan for one article, 50 articles would be 15,000 yuan, and it takes a lot of time to communicate and make revisions.
The AI writing function of AnQiCMS helped me solve this problem.Enter product name and a few keywords in the background, AI will directly generate a structurally complete article.Although the draft cannot be used directly (AI has insufficient accuracy in understanding certain professional parameters), but80% of the content framework and expression are accurateI only need to spend 10-15 minutes adjusting professional data and optimizing expression.
In this way, I completed all 50 product articles in a week, and the time invested in each article was less than 20 minutes.If there was no AI assistance, this level of task would at least require a month of editing work.
Safety is reassuring
The previous WordPress website had a lot of security plugins installed: Wordfence, Limit Login Attempts, Sucuri...Too many plugins make the website slow, and not installing them doesn't make me feel secure.And often receive WordPress security update notifications, afraid that one day I won't update in time and be exploited by hackers.
After switching to AnQiCMS,No security plugins are installed, the system has been running for three months without any security issuesThe underlying binary file is compiled in Go language, and does not have the file inclusion and remote code execution vulnerabilities that PHP has.And the update frequency of AnQiCMS is not high (which is actually a good thing, indicating that there are no urgent security vulnerabilities that need frequent patching), and I only receive one version update reminder every three months.
Let's talk about the shortcomings I think
Too few template choices
This is my biggest pain point. Although the quality of AnQiCMS templates is good (at least the loading speed is fast and the code is standardized), the whole template market adds up to about 30 sets, which is nothing compared to the thousands of themes that WordPress has.
Our company is involved in industrial equipment, I want a template that has an industrial style, a product display page, and a case display page, and I haven't found a completely satisfactory one after looking around.Finally, I could only choose a minimalist corporate template and then modified some styles with CSS.This template has a large custom space, and it's not too difficult to modify.
If you have high requirements for website design,It may be necessary to do secondary development on the AnQiCMS template or to find someone to customize the templateThis cost needs to be considered in advance.
The plugin ecosystem needs to develop
The point was made that not installing a security plugin is an advantage, but there is also a problem with the limited number of plugins for feature expansion.I need to synchronize the form data on the website to the company's CRM system, I looked around the plugin center and couldn't find anything ready-made, and in the end, I had to write a simple API receiving program to do the connection.
There are no ready-made plugins for marketing tools like email marketing, social media auto-sharing, and A/B testing.Although these features can be achieved through third-party tools (such as Mailchimp, Buffer), integrating them directly into the CMS backend would be more convenient.
Community content is mainly in Chinese
AnQiCMS's community and documentation are mostly in Chinese.It is a good thing for domestic users, but it is more difficult to search for English resources in the community when you want to make an English website and encounter problems.Fortunately, the official documentation has an English version, but it is not as rich as the Chinese community strategy.
My English site also uses AnQiCMS, most of the basic functions are supported, but when encountering some technical problems, I need to explore them myself, or go to the Chinese community for help and then translate and understand them.
Advice for beginners
If you decide to try AnQiCMS, here are several suggestions accumulated over three months of experience:
- Install the template first before changing the content. The HTML structure of the content area may vary when changing templates. If a lot of content is written first and then the template is changed, the layout may need to be adjusted.
- Make good use of custom fields. When creating product display pages and case pages, it is recommended to use custom fields to organize the data structure first, which will facilitate subsequent template calls.
- Articles written by AI must be reviewed by humans.. AI understands Chinese quite well, but when it comes to professional data and company information, it must be reviewed manually, never publish directly.
- Regularly backup the databaseAlthough AnQiCMS is very stable, any system has unexpected risks. There is a backup tool in the background, and it is recommended to set up automatic weekly backups once.
- Explore the community and QQ group more.. The community atmosphere of AnQi CMS is pretty good, and official technical staff are often online to answer questions. Many usage tips cannot be found in the documents, but they can be obtained by asking in the group.
Final Summary
Three months of use experience:AnQiCMS is a system with distinct advantages and disadvantagesIt brings tangible value in terms of performance, security, and AI features, reducing server costs by one level and increasing content production efficiency several times.But there is still a lot of room for growth in terms of template selection and plugin ecology.
If you are an operator of a corporate website,No extreme special requirements for website design, pursuing cost performance and convenience，AnQiCMS is a worthy long-term investment choice.If you need highly customized complex projects or can't do without certain plugins, it's not too late to wait for the AnQiCMS ecosystem to mature a bit.
At least for me, after using it for these three months, I feel that the initial 'try it out' was worthwhile.