Lite Website Content Management Options · Freelance Web Development in Guernsey by Jim Rowe

Building websites that can be quickly and easily updated is vitally important but with so many content management systems available how do you make the decision as to which one to use.

I am really concentrating on what I would categories as “lite” content solutions. Sites that take the pain out of managing your design and content but aren’t going to give you absolutely everything you might ever need in the process.

The first option that is probably not considered content management at all is simple HTML pages. And why not!? If you are a competent developer then this actually might be an option. Although while it might be very quick to create initially, or to amend existing pages – you run into problems with dynamic navigation and search. Problems like they are virtually impossible. You can overcome these limitations with snippets of php and the like – but unless your site is very small indeed this will become messy very quickly. If you’re site IS that simple though – why over complicate it. It often pays to make things only as complicated as necessary now, and deal with additions (that may never happen) later.

The main weaknesses with this static approach are the following.

Technical knowledge needed to make content changes
No dynamic navigation
No content search
Design/template changes are time-consuming

So what are our options to solve these issues yet retain a very simple site. First of all we need a way of storing content in a way that allows us to add dynamic navigation and build pages based on the combination of a template and stored content. Then we need some kind of editor that allows none developers to edit the content and perhaps even to select templates.

At this point there can be a quick discussion about baking and frying. These terms are used in the CMS industry to describe when a content rendering system actually produces the html pages for the user.

Baking describes a system that generates the pages when they are published which allows for faster and more economical processing by the web server – ideal for high volume systems. If the pages are baked it limits the systems option to personalise the content however, which may or may not be important depending on the site you are producing.

Frying describes a system that waits until the user requests a page before putting all of the content together – great for personalization, rubbish for efficiency. To improve efficiency some kind of caching will likely be performed – adding to the complexity. This might be the only option for a dynamic site though.

So lets take a look at a few content management systems…

WordPress (fried cms)

WordPress is a fantastic blog with limited content management support. Certainly can be made to work well on simple to moderately complex sites, but it does require some experience to build a custom template and it isn’t the simplest system in the world to work with – requiring database set-up and configuration. This is really good for any site but you really need to have a WordPress developer involved in the project or you may run into difficulties.

Read more about WordPress on their website.

CushyCMS (baked cms)

Chushy is a fantastically simple idea – your designer/developer builds your site as static HTML and then adds tags in certain places within the content and adds the site to their CushyCMS control panel. As an author you log in and it gives you a list of pages to edit, and on every page you can edit the specific areas the developer has allowed. This allows for content to be edited in even the most complex designs very easily.

Another advantage of Cushy is that everything is done using static HTML pages and FTP, meaning your site will be as economic with server resources as possible – so ideal for high volume but small sites (maybe microsites for specific marketing campaigns!).

The drawback Cushy has is that you cannot add extra pages without the input of the developer (although the process is simple enough), so it is not much use for sites that want to grow their content.

Try CushyCMS out on their site.

Jekyll (baked cms)

While WordPress creates you a site based on PHP and a mysql database and Cushy works by marking up your content within static HTML pages Jekyll takes a third different approach. Your content is created using a layout file and content files created in one of several template languages such as Textile or Liquid. You then run the Jekyll script and it combines it all, creating your entire site.

This isn’t as simple to edit as a CushyCMS site but because the layout is separated from the content it is much more useful for producing larger sites. It was built originally for use on GitHub (source code hosting) and is good for high volume sites as it is a really efficient way of producing the pages. It is more work to make changes compared to the other sites though.

Read more about Jekyll on the Jekyll GitHub page.

Other Options

I am sure everyone out there will have their own favourite CMS system but I think that the three above offer three very different approaches that will meet different people’s needs.

There is also always the option to manage your site completely through a third party such as WordPress.com or the very good [Building websites that can be quickly and easily updated is vitally important but with so many content management systems available how do you make the decision as to which one to use.