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It’s interesting to me how much interest SSG’s get and how much bad press WordPress gets. I don’t agree with everything that Mullenweg says but recently he was
by dmje 6y ago
It’s interesting to me how much interest SSG’s get and how much bad press WordPress gets. I don’t agree with everything that Mullenweg says but recently he was in an interview where he was saying (along the lines of..): “devs say they need styling, and theming and plugins and comments and a nice ui and then they come up with an alternative to Wordpress, wtf!?” and really, he’s got a point.
On the one hand - if you seriously just want a static site, then just build it by hand. If you want a script to chunk through a bunch of markdown files, then do that. But don’t go thinking that any of these approaches are going to come close to the editor simplicity - or familiarity - of Wordpress. And please, please, please don’t forget that THE EDITORS - the non-technical, content production workhorse - are the people that matter here. Having some elegant dev-centric CMS that has some astonishingly amazing data structure and a whizzy JAMstack style phalange doesn’t mean squit if your editors can’t use it. The point of most sites is the content, and the clue is in the name: a Content management system. If your editors are miserable, your site will be crap, end of.
Then of course there is the “well, it’s hard to maintain” crowd, to which I say either 1) Wordpress.com: free, hosted, secure or 2) ..and you think your groovy jamstack style crazily complex hipster tangled-ness is seriously easier to maintain than a simple LAMP stack?
There is something compelling about a system that dumps static files from Wordpress (I’m building one as a plugin just for a laugh right now) - this way you get the niceness of the editing interface without the (apparent) hosting woes, but throwing out both the familiarity of the interface and then adding in a whole other raft of complexities seems nuts to me.
- api 6y agoHeadless CMSes have always totally mystified me. I tried to get into them once to try them out and was unable to understand how this was better than either a conventional CMS or just writing fucking HTML.
- mekkkkkk 6y agoHeadless CMSes are great for when you want to consume the managed content on multiple clients. For example, if you have a bunch of the editorial stuff that you want to present on both an app and websites. We even use the headless CMS for managing copy sent to customers in notifications and emails. It's a quick and easy bridge between editors and tech stacks.
- blowski 6y agoAgencies. WordPress is a commoditised product that puts them on the same level as everybody else. Whereas a bespoke CMS locks clients in, whilst providing a “unique client experience”. It’s “not invented here” syndrome as suffered by business owners. It’s total bullshit of course, but I think they’re the people who sustain the myth. It’s how you end up with some tiny company that very rarely changes their website having a bespoke CMS.
- badsectoracula 6y agoFWIW the linked SSG CMS isn't your usual directory-with-markdown-and-obsure-scripts, Publii is fully visual editor.
- dmje 6y agoYeh, I’ve had a play with it in the past. It seems reasonable. But it comes with its own set of complexities and nuances and ultimately I just ended up back at Wordpress, which is where I’d started.