I’ve been experimenting with the Perch CMS lately. My quest for the “just right” CMS seems to be never-ending as I’ve worked my way though Kirby, SilverStripe, concrete5 and back to WordPress over the last year or so. I suppose I’m looking for the right mix of “fun to work in,” flexible and powerful.

This will not be a formal review of the product, but I do want to highlight a couple of the features of Perch that stand out to me.

Clean Code

Unlike many CMSs, Perch does not generate code of its own (with the exception noted later). Instead, you use all of your own markup and simply insert Perch’s template tags (HTML) or page tags (PHP) where you want something from Perch to go.

That means Perch works with your code style; you don’t have to work with Perch’s. You create CSS classes named as you’d like. And you write your HTML markup in whatever way suits you. If you have CSS frameworks or PHP code libraries to support your design, go right ahead and use them as if there were no Perch. It doesn’t care.