I came across a post recently that read something along the lines of Content management systems like Drupal take so long to learn that by the time you have a website up and running you could have learned PHP and CSS and built your own website. Not only that but you're now trapped in a rigid system when you could have built your own website in any way you like". It's important to debunk this kind of gunk because it does no-one any good...

Restricted freedom

First off, let's take a common sense approach to the above problem that doesn't require us to delve into any technical issues. In essence the poster was advocating that people create their own websites on the basis that it provides greater freedom. Sounds great; but what is it in a website that requires all this freedom?

Is he honestly saying that each and every website should re-invent the wheel when it comes to designing say, an access control policy, user management systems, content management systems, themeing and layout systems, file control, media and image handling, search settings, performance and so on and so on. Seems like a lot of work to take on considering it's already done by a team of very smart people with an even larger team of people testing and improving the code.

That aside, let's say that someone, in a delirious state of mind, decides to code everything from scratch in order to obtain their freedom. Whatever it is that is unique about the website, it's still going to need a huge amount of features that are common to all websites - like the ones mentioned previously. So anywhere up to 90% of their time is going to be spent coding for features that could have been taken for granted by starting out with a Drupal or Site prebuilder distribution.

You have exactly the same freedom using a CMS as you do working from scratch because any unique code you create can be integrated into a CMS with ease. Just because you have certain functionality included in a CMS distribution doesn't mean you can't modify it or remove it completely.

Overkill

This is an interesting issue because a few times I have seen people asking what they should use for, say, their blog. A lot of respondants say that using a full blown CMS is overkill. I'm not even sure what this means. How can a system that can do everything you need and more be overkill? Is there some rule I'm not aware of that prevents people using the best system possible because it so happens it can do more things than you need initially? That seems a bit frugal.

Doesn't it make sense to go for the best possible platform knowing that at some stage in the future you have room to grow and adapt the site? What happens if your blog becomes popular and you want good advertising management software, or to sell t-shirts using a solid ecommerce platform? If you haven't gone with a proper web platform from the start these issues become precisely that... issues! Why do it to yourself?

I guess people are put off because there is a perception that it's harder initially to use a CMS system. Well, that was certainly true in the past - but things have gotten easier, a lot easier. So easy in fact, it's possible to get set up without ever touching code or having to install the CMS yourself.