First experience with Perch... last CMS I'll use?

I've created several websites over the years for friends, Scout groups etc, and always leaned towards Joomla as the platform.

Then a colleague pointed me to Perch when I started a redesign of a Scout campsite website.

As a result Joomla has rather unceremoniously gone in the bin!

I wanted to write the new website in standard html5/jquery/bootstrap to take advantage of easy responsive design and simple code and I was tired of wading through the complex joomla codebase. I started by creating a static site, with the design and content.

Then I started integrating perch, first by creating code block regions and just copy/pasting the sections of html into a region, then systematically going through creating templates for the different types of content and converting the regions to those templates.

Being a software tester working in an Agile software development company, this approach fits in so well with how I'm used to working (even though this is a home-time project!). By that I mean iterative development.

I'm still exploring the full capabilities of Perch, and I'm sure there are some bits that it won't quite do yet, but to say I'm happy with it would be an understatement. It's so lightweight, and fits so well with my development process that I can't imaging going back to joomla.

Tolmers Scout Activity Centre