Why no CMS?

Almost every website runs on a CMS, a content management system. It's the program behind the scenes that lets you create pages, change texts and place photos. The idea is simple, and it has brought a lot of good. Still, we don't see it as a given.

What a CMS actually is

A CMS consists of a back office, a store for your content, and often dozens of extensions you choose yourself. Your site is therefore not one thing, but a collection of parts that have to work together.

Security

Every extension, every login page and every update that waits is a door left open. Attackers don't look for the nicest sites, but for the outdated ones. The more parts you have, the more there is to keep up to date.

The learning curve

A CMS asks you to learn a system you only use now and then. By the time you want to change something again, you've forgotten the way to the right button. So you search, click the wrong thing, or send someone an email.

The illusion of control

A dashboard full of settings seems to put everything in your hands. In practice, it mostly shows how much can break. A wrong setting, a theme that no longer fits a plugin, a menu that suddenly disappears. Whoever has many buttons makes mistakes more easily.

With us, you say what you want. The editor finds the place and makes the change, and every change is checked before it goes live. Fewer buttons means less chance that something breaks.

Maintenance

Updates, backups, a server that has to stay current. They're small tasks, but they pile up. Often you only notice they've been left undone when something goes wrong.

Where a CMS does fit

Do you have a team that publishes large amounts of content every day, with several editors and complex workflows? Then a CMS is a logical choice, as long as you maintain it well. For most sites with a clear purpose, though, it's more tooling than needed.