Must I use CMS?

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1

I’m about to build a static website that’s historical in nature. I’ve never used the CMS module, and am happy to learn it, but do I really need to bother? What’s to be gained using the CMS for this kind of site, since it’s doubtful that images will change or need much updating in the future. Please advise. Thanks!

2

The CMS is most useful when;

  • You have sets of content that similarly-shaped and organized - recipes, articles, whitepapers, products, people, etc.
  • You want to have each of those items on its own page, like /recipe/blueberry-muffins and /recipe/norwegian-yak-stew.
  • You want to be able to list those things, sort and filter them in different ways for navigation and directory pages.
  • You will be adding or updating new content later.
  • You have external automations that need to be able to add or update content later.

If you’re fine with needing to design each of your pages individually, and fine with the 100 static page limit, you may not need it.

3

Once reason it’s super useful is because you can design one template page, and dynamically load in thousands of different records.

Essentially turning 1 page into 1,000’s of pages.

Think of blogs, directory listing sites, etc…

Every blog post, every directory listing has the same template / layout, it’s just the content that differs.

The best example is probably this forum. Each post (including this one) has the same layout, but each post’s content is different.

That’s really powerful.

Hope that helps!

4

Thanks, Chris. Your explanation underscored what I suspected. Good to know.

5

Thank you Michael, for confirming my suspicion about CMS. One day, I’m hoping soon, I’ll have an opportunity to build a CMS-based site. But for now it appears that it’s not of much help.