Managing a website without a content management system
It is almost impossible to imagine the year 2024 without a content management system. Even programmed websites that you set up yourself from scratch are losing popularity for various reasons. In this blog post, we want to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of a website without a content management system.
Advantages of a website without a CMS
A website without a content management system that you set up completely yourself has a number of advantages, as you have full control over what you provide on the individual pages and which components you use.
In most cases, this allows you to achieve a 'lean' end result that requires a minimum of code, which in turn results in a faster website than is the case with a content management system. Any external source or library that is loaded can cause delays, which you can control directly with your own website.
With a content management system, you often do not have this and are dependent on one or more external parties being used. You can also use the technique or library you are most familiar with, for example you can use the standard PHP in combination with HTML / CSS and Javascript. But you can also create a website with the brand new .NET framework, for example. So you can set everything up yourself as you wish and get the best out of your website in your own way.
Disadvantages of a website without a CMS
The disadvantage of a website without a CMS is that others who also want to use it or create content for your website must also do so in code format, or you must transfer this yourself in code to make it visible on your website.
For each change, you must dive into the code, often in your local project, and then publish it to make the change visible on the web. This process can have advantages and disadvantages. You have more version management and control, but for every small change that only requires one action on a website. You have to go through this whole process. This also applies, for example, to updating a phone number on the contact page.
The user-friendliness of your team plays the biggest role here, because as soon as only you or your technical colleagues can publish or manage content on a website, this can often lead to delays and frustration within a team. A content management system such as WordPress, Joomla or Umbraco offers the ability to set up different levels and roles for users so that everyone has access to the components they need to do their job.
The choice for most users
For these reasons, most website administrators opt for a website built with a content management system, with WordPress being by far the most popular. This CMS is very user-friendly and can be used by anyone to achieve a reasonable and fast result for a website. Umbraco is the alternative for developers and technicians, as the layout and technical parts are fully manageable and the content can only be edited by other users.
For larger companies and technical themes, a website created with Umbraco hosting is therefore often the first choice. We usually host WordPress websites as a hosting party, and these websites are also often fully managed by administrators who have no other technical experience. This is the plus point of WordPress, but it can also be a minus point. Often, for every component or problem, a plug-in is downloaded to put a band-aid on the problem. Without taking a closer look at how to solve the problem structurally. This can lead to insecure websites with often outdated code that depends on many different parties to update and maintain. That's why we pay a lot of attention to this topic in our knowledge base and blog posts, to enable every user to run a secure and fast website. Regardless of your technical knowledge.
Use cases for both arguments
Static websites that don't need to be changed much often benefit from a self-built website, while dynamic websites or websites whose content needs to be added frequently benefit from a content management system. So, as in this blog post, there are several considerations you can make for your website or project. There is also the question of what your technical skills are like. Will you have to spend a month writing a functionality?
If this functionality already exists in an existing content management system, it can often mean reinventing the wheel. So take stock of your needs and capabilities and also look at your team to see what experience they have in this area. Based on this, you can decide whether your website or project would be better realized in a content management system or with a self-programmed solution.
