Introduction
Factor is an open-source JavaScript platform built for web professionals. It is designed for people who care about quality and don't like limitations. It's also nice for teams who need power and flexibility but have deadlines.
Hitting the right balance of needs has led Factor to be used in production by many organizations. Once you learn the basics, you'll love how easy it is to create superior websites and apps.
Every day Factor powers some of the most powerful yet scalable apps on the internet. Its modern architecture allows for portability, performance, and optimization which allows you to do more.
The Problem Factor Solves
Building quality JavaScript apps is hard. There is too much reinventing of the wheel. Developers are forced to adopt too much code and things become complicated quickly. Months can be wasted on boilerplate functionality that doesn't add distinct value to your app.
The solution is using a core framework that helps you with best practices and structure; and then gives you the ability to easily add plugins or themes to reach your mission-specific goals. Factor is here to help you with this.
How Factor Is Different
The first question people usually ask is, how is Factor different from everything else out there?
A few key characteristics of Factor:
- (Really) Easy Plugins and Themes - Work with a special architecture that allows you to add new functionality in seconds with plugins and themes to 'just work.'
- Server & App in One Environment - Use a full-stack system that combines everything you need from endpoints (auth, ssr) with a robust client-side app framework. This reduces the need for external APIs and simplifies your app's structure as you build advanced features.
- Javascript Focused - JavaScript is the most popular and actively developed tool for the web. Life is much simpler when you only need to worry JavaScript and JavaScript-focused complementary frameworks (MongoDB, Vue, TypeScript, Webpack).
- Modern Portability and Scalability - Use modern technology that allows applications to be massively easier to scale and work within different environments. Do things that your friends building PHP apps can only dream of...
- Open-Source Focused (No SaaS) - Use an architecture is designed to help you avoid the risks, costs, and complication associated with external APIs and services. Build on an open-source stack and increase your chances of success in the long-term.
Here is a comparison table to help you quickly see how things compare:
| Factor (JavaScript CMS) |
PHP CMS (eg. WordPress) |
JAMStack (eg. Gatsby) |
Frameworks (eg. Nuxt, Next) |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1️⃣ Single Language | ✅ | ❌ | ❓ | ❓ |
| 🚀 Modern Stack | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| 🎛 Dashboard & CMS | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| 🔌 Easy to Extend | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| 🎨 Usable Themes | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
| 🏎 Rapid Development | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ |
| ⚡️ Dynamic (e.g. Auth) | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ |
| 📈 Easily Scalable | ✅ | ❌ | ✅ | ✅ |
| 💼 Unified Platform | ✅ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ |
The Backstory
Factor was created as an internal framework for building our own apps at Fiction.com.
We started in 2017, building an application for renting monthly home, similar in approach to Airbnb. In this process, we made many mistakes around new technology; continually getting fooled by the large marketing budgets of big corporations or venture-funded companies.
After wasting many months reading technical documentation, debugging, reinventing the wheel, and discovering undisclosed limitations of various services; we decided we needed to formalize our software approach and build something simple and standard.
With that, we started building Factor.
Try It Out
Now that you know a little about Factor, and what it can do for you, you probably want to learn about installation and setup or read about it's core concepts and architecture.