Like Andy C, I’ve been following Howard Rogers’ CMS journey with interest.
I’m always hopeful I’ll find tools that make my life easier, but as yet I’ve been unable to find a CMS tool that suits me. The biggest problem with all the CMS tools I’ve trialed is the way they use the database. Invariably, each page is generated at runtime from the contents of the database, making the database access speed a major limiting factor for sites with high number of hits. So why serve static and semi-static data from the database?
By far, the majority of my site is static content. If I want to alter the format of the site I alter either the Cascading Style Sheet or 4 simple template files. I don’t revisit each page on the site. That would be lunacy. My homegrown CMS system stores the contents of all my pages in the database, but rather than generating a page for each request, I generate the whole site once, including templates and include files, to flat files and only regenerate individual pages when things change. Dynamic and semi-static content, such as article ratings and RSS feeds, are located in small include files, which are automatically regenerated when necessary.
My difficulty in finding a CMS I like comes from that fact that I have most of the advantages of these CMS systems, like web editing and backup/recovery, but I also get speed thrown into the mix as a bonus.
I guess the hunt continues 🙂
Cheers
Tim…