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Imho CMS is just a tool that generates static html files on the server. The distinction is a bit artificial. CMSes have static html cashing and CDNs will allow

by omnimus 7mo ago

Imho CMS is just a tool that generates static html files on the server. The distinction is a bit artificial. CMSes have static html cashing and CDNs will allow you to "one-click" firewall the dynamic administration and cache the static html for you. Static website generators are cool way for programmers to do that work on their machine but in the end the distinction of what gets served is very small (if you set up the basics).

linkjuice4all 7mo ago
CMSs allow non-technical people to update the site - that's why WordPress, Drupal, and all of the shambling corpses of "digital experience platforms" still command the dollars and eyeballs that they do. Go ahead and give your content people access to a static site builder and see how quickly the process falls apart. Static site generators are perfect for engineers but terrible for the marketing people that are the actual "customers" of your public-facing website.
- marcus_holmes 7mo ago
  I did this, and you are 100% correct. I used Hugo, told the marketing people to send me a markdown file and I'd load it up to Hugo. That was clearly too painful for them. So I told them to send me a Word doc and I'd convert it to markdown and load it up. That was too painful. I told them to send me an email with the words and images and I'd work out the rest. That was too painful. They got some marketing agency to rewrite the entire marketing site in Wordpress, and then we had to implement some godawful kludges to get our backend to redirect to their shitty WP host for the appropriate pages. It was awful. But the marketing folks were finally happy. They could write a blog post (that no-one read) themselves in the actual CMS and see it go live when they pushed the button. We spent thousands, in a cash-strapped startup, dealing with this bullshit.
  - lwhi 7mo ago
    But this wasn't their fault. The tech layer you suggested didn't match the business and organisational layer. We need a CMS so it can act as an abstraction layer.

by omnimus 7mo ago

linkjuice4all 7mo ago

CMSs allow non-technical people to update the site - that's why WordPress, Drupal, and all of the shambling corpses of "digital experience platforms" still command the dollars and eyeballs that they do. Go ahead and give your content people access to a static site builder and see how quickly the process falls apart. Static site generators are perfect for engineers but terrible for the marketing people that are the actual "customers" of your public-facing website.

marcus_holmes 7mo ago
I did this, and you are 100% correct. I used Hugo, told the marketing people to send me a markdown file and I'd load it up to Hugo. That was clearly too painful for them. So I told them to send me a Word doc and I'd convert it to markdown and load it up. That was too painful. I told them to send me an email with the words and images and I'd work out the rest. That was too painful. They got some marketing agency to rewrite the entire marketing site in Wordpress, and then we had to implement some godawful kludges to get our backend to redirect to their shitty WP host for the appropriate pages. It was awful. But the marketing folks were finally happy. They could write a blog post (that no-one read) themselves in the actual CMS and see it go live when they pushed the button. We spent thousands, in a cash-strapped startup, dealing with this bullshit.
- lwhi 7mo ago
  But this wasn't their fault. The tech layer you suggested didn't match the business and organisational layer. We need a CMS so it can act as an abstraction layer.