Post 6 of 7 in "HubSpot CMS Is Better" series.
"HubSpot CMS is better
It's so easy to adopt
I'm building content with such freedom
'Cause my Fusion theme is fully drag-n-drop"
These are lyrics from the second half of Verse 3 in my parody song, "WordPress Got Ran Over By My HubSpot", which addresses the powerful and flexible content management capabilities of HubSpot CMS due to the modular theme structure. Of course, this portion of the song kicks in with the most obviously true declaration ever... that "HubSpot CMS is better"!
Is WordPress Good At Managing Content?
Out of the box, WordPress is very basic and limited when it comes to managing your website content. At its core, it's a simple blog tool. You have your blog content, then anything else around it is locked in and fed by whatever template you're using.
Now, you CAN build out flexible content structures and have multiple editable elements to your content... BUT you'll have to dig in with those dreaded third-party plugins!
Custom Content Structure
With a plugin like Advanced Custom Fields, you can create fully customized content frameworks that you can then populate within your pages. This can work very well, however, it is not a user-friendly item to get setup. You'll need a developer to set it up right and in a way that you can manage moving forward.
Third-Party Editors
WordPress has a drag-n-drop editor called Gutenberg that was added in 2018 in response to multiple 3rd party solutions coming out to replace the built-in editor that was... pretty worthless. Gutenberg does give you the ability to drag and drop various types of content blocks onto your page, bringing some flexibility to the table without having to use an additional plugin. An improvement, but still doesn't match up to the other options.
Popular plugins like Elementor and Divi are widely used within WordPress sites to give that drag-n-drop content editing framework. They bring a large list of pre-built templates and widgets, allowing you to build your website quickly. From animations to integrations with other software tools, these editors certainly upgrade your content management experience. Both of the plugins named here will cost you another subscription, although Elementor does have a scaled back free version.
Is It Worth It?
The biggest cost of using these plugins, however, is performance. Even if you are using them, you're still packing and loading Gutenberg, as that is built into WordPress. Then these plugins, having an extensive collection of tools, features, and templates, give you a big load of assets that your website has to carry around, whether you're using all of it or not. Many WordPress sites suffer in performance due to tools like this.
HubSpot Themes
So, how does HubSpot CMS handle all content management? When CMS Hub was launched in April 2020, the current theme structure was introduced. The entire way websites were built in HubSpot was revamped, and done in a manner that was really geared towards the marketer, or whoever is managing the content. There was a real focus towards enabling the marketer and removing the need for having to shoot up a flare for a developer every time they needed a simple modification.
What Is A Theme?
A HubSpot theme is a set of templates, modules, global content, and style settings that can be used to create a website. You can dial in the style settings that will apply globally to all of your pages that are built within the theme. This makes for a consistent look and feel, while still leaving customization abilities at the page level for when you need to override your established defaults. It also contains global elements like a header and footer that can be edited for any page, but apply globally across your site. Then, all of the modules (usually anywhere from 20-50 in a theme) are your building blocks to piece together a page however you'd like. Drag and drop the modules where you need them, and then within each module, take advantage of whatever built in styling is available per module instance.
Out of the box, HubSpot includes a handful of themes that you can use. No additional plugins or customization is needed to enable this flexible, modular framework!
HubSpot Template Marketplace
HubSpot Marketplace has a large and growing number of themes available that you can quickly get started with to build your site within HubSpot. Many of these themes are even free! We have an incredible theme that will soon be available in the Marketplace!
Keep in mind that with any HubSpot theme, whatever the target or demo industry it comes with, you can use that theme for anything! The initial target industry is essentially just an example usage of the theme.
Child Themes
If you want to have multiple variations of your theme, to give variation to different sections of your website, you can create child themes. This allows you to maintain the base theme, but then tweak as needed within the child framework to customize as needed. You can also use a child theme to customize a theme that you have downloaded from the Marketplace, as you can't directly edit the downloaded theme files.
See For Yourself
With HubSpot, you can quickly create a FREE account and give the CMS a test drive! Check out what you can do right from the start of creating an account, and grab a theme from the Marketplace to dig in a little deeper! We've helped migrate many clients from other platforms like WordPress on to HubSpot CMS, and they are always thrilled with their decision once they experience how much easier it is to manage!
If you're running a website on WordPress, or some other platform, it's time to drag yourself out of that rut and drop us a line! Get it... drag and drop?? Anyway, we'd love to help and chat with you about how we could do so!