PHP CMS comparisons #4 - Filesizes revisited

My previous post is really not that old. I wrote it 13th of September last year, so less than half a year ago.

Still, a fair bit has changed since then.

Kirby launched Kirby 4 in December, and Craft CMS just launched Craft CMS 5 Beta 1 yesterday.

Sizes from Sept 2023

  1. Kirby CMS (v3.9): 6.1mb

  2. Wordpress (v6.3.1): 54.9mb

  3. Craft CMS (v4.5.4): 70.8mb

  4. Statamic (v4.21.0): 86.3mb

Updated numbers Feb 2024

What has changed since then you ask?

  1. Kirby CMS (4.1.0): 6.8mb (0.7mb increase / 11.5% increase)

  2. Wordpress (v6.4.3): 57MB (2mb / 3.8% increase)

  3. Craft CMS (Craft CMS 4.7.2.1): 78.2 (7.4mb / 10.4% increase)

  4. Craft CMS (Craft CMS 5.0.0 BETA 1): 88.7mb (17.9mb / 25.3% increase)

  5. Statamic (v4.48.0): 88.6mb (2.3mb / 2.67% increase)

And all this in a timespan of about 5 months. Especially the 25% increase to Craft 5 is one serious jump. Is it really 25% better too?

Who cares, right?

I care :-)

In the same way the average weight of web pages has steadily increased over the years, we are (arguably) not building much better sites than we did 10 years ago.

Of course I love progress, and I also understand the issue of backwards capability. Still, think of something like jQuery, with its massive user base, still managing to reduce the size of jQuery 4 compared to 3.7.1.

Or think of Snow Leopard, one of my favorite ever OS updates, managing to make a point out of simply "cleaning up" and having "0 new features". Still the release was full of refinements and little touches. And an upgrade from Leopard to Snow Leopard actually freed up about 7GB of hard disk space. And this was back in 2009! Thats my favorite type of release.

Of course I'm still exited about Craft 5, and I'll still be a happy customer. But as personal feedback, I would love to see a Snow Leopard type of release sometime in the future.

Notes: