Do I really need a Content Management System

I have been trolling these boards for a while, reading the recommendations, and I have downloaded joomla and drupal and tinkered around quite a bit. Bottom line is this: unless someone with no coding knowledge will need to add a significant amount of content, is a CMS system really necessary? I have vBulletin, so I have that piece down, but for the main website section of the site, most of what I am looking to do can be accomplished by a few simple php code blocks and includes. The downside to a CMS system seem much bigger:

1. Added complexity and overhead.
2. Pages slower (much slower in some cases) to load.
3. Potential security issues if I forget to update a patch or upgrade.
4. Spammers and hackers much more likely to write scripts and bots to mess with a popular CMS system than a custom site.
5. If something breaks, it is harder to fix because I didn't build it in the first place.
6. It seems to me (at least after fooling around with Joomla and Drupal for a couple of weeks) to be harder to get things to look exactly how I want them to look.

The only thing I think that I will be giving up by not going with a CMS system is RSS feed syndication, which I am sure I could figure out how to do manually within a week or two.

Am I crazy?

 

No, not crazy. My wife and I run a content intensive site, however the site also has heaps of mini applications. I have toyed with moving from where it is now to a full CMS and taking out the rework I just can't see the benefits.

I built the template system myself, my wife edits in frontpage, i do the coding, it's worked for 7 years like this. It's ASP based (which i love) with a few access databases, delivery 60000 pages to 5000 visitors a day. And it's fast.

Most of the sites I have built have been built using the same sort of template system i put together for this original site with lots of success. And for those that have no functionality (just content) i have built a tiny little simple site editor that I can drop into a site whenever i need it.

No complex CMS required.

Now, don't get me wrong, i can see the benefits of a full cms for specific tasks. In my real job we sell an enterprise style CMS however most of our customers are managing 10,000+ pages of content.

I think the main advantage with a true CMS is that if you have invested in a true product (rather than just a cms script) then you get the benefits of updates and upgrades without having to rework, and most good cms's wil give you a framework to build the applications you need to build.

As always, the right tool for the right job. But I agree, it's rare that I recomend a full CMS to most people I talk to.

I must admit that's it really easy to get caught up in using a cms cause it's open source (free) and it works out of the box. However i find, like you, that it takes me longer to get the web pages looking how I want than it might have been to have built a simple page editor.

J

 

I have also downloaded and installed Drupal and Joomla in the last couple of weeks and fiddled a bit with both. My site is currently just a few php pages fetching data (not articles) from the database. The reason I wanted to try a cms is because i wanted to add:
- a forum (new)
- news feeds (currently one, but intened to add more)
- a poll (already exists)
- user participation, e.g. uploading of images like avatar (new)
I also need to redesign the site to make all the above easily accessible. After a few days of playing around with both cms, I am coming to the conclusion that a cms may not be necessary. By the time I finish reading all the docs and howtos to find out how to accomplish what I wanted, I would have done it already in php. The way I see it:
pros for cms

• integrated user management
• integrated poll
• integrated news feeds

cons for cms

• steep and time-consuming learning curve
• can't have more than one poll running or random polls (not sure)
• a lot of unwanted features/themes

I think I will go without a open source cms for now and go with custom coding. When I have a huge chunk of free time, then perhaps I'll come back to them and learn them properly.

RC

 

I think CMS benefits start to present themselves when you get to a little bit higher level of complexity. For example, things like:

- A browsable categorization ('taxonomy') scheme
- Creating and managing different types of content, each with different types of visbility/creation/editing rules for different types of visitors
- Threaded comments attached to various content types

will take more than a few snippets of PHP code to integrate into a site.

I agree that a CMS is overkill to simply apply a template to content as its added. And its not too hard to add forums, galleries, etc to sites and get a consistent look and feel with a little work. But I do think the CMSs have something to offer when you want to integrate more complex features.

It's all about trade-offs - at some point the customization needed to get a CMS to generate the look you want might be less than the coding required to match the functionality it can provide.

 

working with server-side worth it, trust me, you dont have to hard-coded the page everytime you want to edit, just login and go into WYSIWYG editor and you are done, about the unneeded features, just uninstall it.

 

DonkeyTeeth, rosytoes, and jaymcc. I think I am about where you guys are. I can see some benefits, but overall my site isn't complex enough to need it right now. I think I can get most of the community and database-driven stuff that I need out of vBulletin, and code the rest of my site maunally.

However, I bet if I could take 2 weeks and intensively study joomla or drupal, and really understand how it ticks, it would probably pay off immensely. I just don't think I am up to that though.

 

try sNews
it's one page cms script

 

Before knowing about content management, you should have some atleast brief knowledge on CONTENT BUILDING. Building a good content means EASY management. You wont need to be an adept at it, just know what you are doing while building the content, and there you go:

http://www.linkdelivery.com/content_building.html

THis link will certainly help you to make the best content ever!

 

Note that Content Building and Content Management are worlds apart. Knowing how to create quality content definitely does not cause one to be good at/have an easier time with content management.

Also, Your link is just a advertisement for paid forum posting services...how does is relate to this thread in ANY way? THere is a separate forum for advertising services cushion2.

 

Peon,

I suggest you to read informative articles on Content Management Systems given at the following page:

http://content-management-system.ok4y.com/sitemap.html

Hope this helps.

Regards,
Amy.

 

My feeling is CMS can get in the way. I've been designing for over 10 years and have almost always used FrontPage. It can do everything (except css) and do it great when you know how to use the page includes. I am able to redesign my entire sites every day with spending less than 5 minutes to do it. If you are not a designer, and within 5 minutes. But, if you are not a desginer, you are better off using a CMS structure now so you won't have to upgrade later. Sorry for the jumbled message.....