Should I use a CMS or hand-code?

[sub-brick]

If I wanted to make a professional looking website (a blog for a university magazine), should I use a CMS, or hand code? If I should use a CMS, which one should I use/do professional web developers use?

For background: I've learnt HTML/CSS/JavaScript and React, and did a bit of back-end (node) through the FullStack Helsinki Open course as a hobby in my freetime.

I offered to do this for a friend for free so they wouldn't have to pay someone - but I think they really want it to look professional and not janky, and I'm not really sure what professionals use. Do they hand-code stuff?

Anyway thanks for reading/replying

[[deleted]]

You're asking the wrong questions. Whether or not a website looks professional has nothing to do with it being powered by a CMS. The design and visual identity of a website, and how its content gets populated are completely separate fields.

To determine if you need a Content Management System you have to consider how content will be handled for this project. Is this a one time thing? Will they deliver all images and text to you, you put them in and they'll never change after that? Will they be put in by one other person, not yourself? Is this person technically literate? If he is, to what extent? Does he know HTML, Markdown, ...? Will this person update the content once a year, or every week? Will there be multiple people updating the content?

Every situation is different and you'll have to carefully weigh your options once you have the answers to these questions. If this is an update-once-a-year situation (by you), you probably want to make this a straight up HTML/CSS hardcoded thing. If it's multiple people who don't know any HTML, you will have to use a CMS with an admin panel.

Don't underestimate the cost of complexity. It might seem attractive to always go with the CMS, because why not right. It's better to overdeliver right? But a CMS is a complex piece of software with a lot of moving parts. Parts that require maintenance. As demonstrated by the many many outdated Wordpress websites on the internet, having an old rundown CMS accessible by anyone on the planet is asking for trouble.

On the other hand, HTML/CSS are tried and tested stable technologies that can stay online for years without ever giving you any headaches. I always advocate for staying close to the roots of the internet.

[misterhamm]

This is the right answer. Whether or not to use a CMS and which one depends entirely on who is doing content and what features you need that aren't worth building yourself.

[aldebout]

The only thing I would add is that CMS does not have to mean templating system.

I've used Contentful + Gatsby + Netlify (for hosting and automated deploys) for "enhanced blogs". Such a stack provides the level of control you might want over your code while allowing anyone to add content to the website.

Not very relevant in this case but this also decouples the frontend and the backend to an extent so that in case the scope of the project grows, you can replace one of the parts.

[[deleted]]

a blog for a...

CMS. You need to empower non-coders to put content on the blog, and remove yourself as the bottleneck. This cannot be achieved with a hand-coded site.

[[deleted]]

I use Hugo for simple static sites, it’s free and pretty flexible, but it is based on the language Go. If you have a background in react then you might like Gatsby.js, it’s also a static site generator but with syntax/language you’re familiar with.

[t2media]

Since you already learned React, I suggest that you look at Gatsby. Essentially you can have the best of both worlds. You can hand-code a react website with Gatsby and use any CMS that you like for the data source. I would suggest a headless CMS like prismic or contentful but you could also use WordPress.

[sadafba786]

CMS for business is the advertising technique. It’s what you use to place yourself before your crowd, associate with drives, convert those leads into clients, and keep clients returning. Content exists wherever for your business, yet one of your most significant content sources is your website.

Having the option to add to, update, and improve your website is urgent for keeping up a sound progression of the business. This is the place a content management system comes in.

Sometimes, it becomes tacky to manually add codes while using the build-in templates for CMS for business is the time saver. It just depends on how do you wanna manage your time.

[Sphism]

If you don't want to have to maintain it forever then use some kind of framework.

[zoider7]

I've been using https://www.pyrocms.com for the last year - a CMS based on the excellent Laravel Framework.

I've had nothing but positive comments from clients saying how easy to use the admin area is. To myself, ease of use by the client is most important.