Not powered by a CMS - Sunil Shenoy

Posted: 8th Feb 2010

Not powered by a ~~CMS~~

If you have visited my website before January, you would have noticed that my website www.sunilshenoy.com was powered by Posterous. The current version, the one you are currently looking at, is not powered by Posterous.

I am proud to say that this website is not powered by any Content Management System(CMS).

I made plans to redesign my website November last year, but never got around to working on it due to other commitments and also because of Facebook and Twitter. My first step was to look for a CMS to help me run my website, a search on Google led me to the popular choices, which were Wordpress, ExpressionEngine, TypePad, TextPattern and Movable Type.

My requirements for the content management system which would power my website were

Easy to use
Focus on content
Have minimum set of functionalities
Does a few things well
Allows me to have a different design for each blog post
Not buggy and does not ask me to constantly upgrade
Easy to learn
Works with my design and does not ask me to create a template for my design
Fast loading pages without too much background processing

Was I asking for too much? Maybe yes, but this was what I was looking for and almost no CMS matched these requirements.

So why did I not go with the obvious choices for my website? I will leave the details to my next post, but I will list some benefits and issues of not using a Content Management System(CMS)

No CMS - Benefits

Since there is so much work involved, I have to think hard about the content.Is the content really worth so much time / effort?.
Don't have to worry about codes on the page affecting load time.
I have complete creative control over the blog post design.
I get to improve on my XHTML/CSS knowledge every time I write a blog post.
I can write a blog post about why I am not using a Content Management System

A Issue

Every time I write a post, I need to update the Main / Front page and the Post listing page manually

So far the experience of not having a CMS power the website has been great.It works great for me because my requirements for the website are not much. If you have similar requirements or are looking for a CMS to power your portfolio and blog, I would definitely recommend that you try running your website/CMS without a CMS.Provided you have basic knowledge PHP, HTML and CSS.

Update: A CMS which does most of what I want and which I am currently looking to buy is Perch