Content management systems (CMS) are standard place for blogs and websites. Examples include Wordpress, Refinery to name a few.

CMS aim to solve the problem with creating and maintaining a website, and they have certainly made websites more widely available and accessible which is great.

As a developer, however, CMS rarely cover all the needs of a website as we approach more custom and unique websites and pages end up with more code than CMS flexibility. And whilst I don’t have an issue with changing code to update a website, that kind of limits updates to technical users.

I think Content management systems have room to grow and should support a minimal set of features.

Desirable Qualities

  • Easy setup
  • Easy to Maintain
  • Internationalisation
  • CDN Friendly
  • Caching
  • Search Engine Friendly
  • Good Design and User Experience
  • Scalable
  • Extendable

I haven’t found a solution that covers these points adequately, and I don’t really want to build my own. (or do I?)

CMS-free

As a developer compiling a website to static files appeals to me a lot.

Jekyll and other static website generators are becoming popular as static content can easily and cheaply be hosted, along with reduced server complexity and ease of scaling.

This has its issues and probably wouldn’t suggest this to a client just yet. Although Prose.io is getting pretty close to client friendly.