The Good
An attractive interface
The Subrion CMS does have an aesthetically pleasing work interface which is easy on the eyes. Buttons when clicked offer visual feedback and clicking on cells, columns and rows offer visual feedback as well. There are many options listed to for the administrator to utilize for maximum customizability of the website. Unfortunately the functionality of the interface is not as smooth as it looks.
Scalability
Subrion's strongest selling point is its scalability. The functionality of the CMS can be easily extended by installing packages and plugins. A relatively humble site can quickly host a complex system of users and user-created content.
Easy to add new sections to the site
Through the use of "Blocks" within the CMS, work is minimized for the user when a new section needs to be introduced to the site. Instead of sifting through files and copy and pasting code/text, the user can simply define a "Block" in the "Manage Blocks" page, and specify where exactly the "Block" should appear on the site.
The Bad
Lack of Documentation & Help Text
Through the frustrating process of familiarizing with the "Admin Panel," at many points, we could not figure out what the next step in completing a task was, and turned to Google and the Subrion forums for answers. Subrion, however, does not have much documentation at all on how to use their "Admin Panel." Most of the documentation and support is geared towards backend development and the installation of the CMS. Even a general search on Google turned up irrelevant results, forcing us to figure out how to use the interface by ourselves.
Adding to the dilemma, the interface has many instances of poorly titled elements and no descriptions. A simple description could have saved users much time on the "Manage Menus" document structure interface. The HTML title attribute could have been used as well to offer the user more information as to what an item does on a page. Instead, the user must learn the interface through trial and error.
No search bar
A search bar is critical to finding content within a CMS, however, the user cannot search for features or content. The search bar that currently exists on the CMS is simply for searching through the members of the site, rather than to navigate through the CMS. Having a search bar would be helpful for whenever the user is stuck on what to do next or how to change some part of the site. It also makes it easier, when searching content, to identify which block that content belongs to. Blocks can become difficult to manage, and being able to look at the site, copy a line of text, and search it up in the "Admin Panel" would save the user the effort of manually searching the blocks.