Choosing a CMS

How hard is it to choose a CMS? Turns out, nigh impossible.

I have a client who wants to write content on the Internet. My client values ownership of their writing and videos but doesn’t want to get lost in the jungle of technology and never actually publish their work. The software plumbing should be hidden from view because it’s overwhelming; there should be an easy way to write, edit, and publish. Paying for a site is welcome, if it can be funded by an individual’s income. What should my client choose? Let’s peruse the landscape…

Landscape

The CMS landscape spans from the feature-packed, plugin-manic heavy-weights like Wordpress, Drupal, and Wix, through the up-and-coming middle-weights like Ghost and Craft, and into the light-weight contestants like Forestry.io and Netlify CMS. Let’s see what a representative from each might offer.

Heavy-weights

The heavy-weights claim to be for the non-technical. And yes, I don’t have to read a single line of code to launch a Wordpress site. But wow, their website is overwhelming.

Since I started my first Wordpress site back in 2010, the software has added dozens of new features. It’s clear how a consultant could build a career building and optimizing Wordpress sites. What it lacks in simplicity, however, it makes up in plugin diversity. While I don’t have a specific use-case in mind, the plugin ecosystem is so expansive that it’s hard to imagine a component I’d want that’s not available (so long as I’m willing to pay).

I’m sure that, if you know the path, Wordpress could get you going in a matter of minutes. Many of my favorite authors write on the platform, and it might be a good option if my client had a dozen half-baked ideas she wanted to attempt. But for the lone writer who’s just getting started, it’s too much.

Middle-weights

Middle-weight may not be the best title for this category, but it fits the theme. The CMS' that fit here are specialized sites with more polish than a light-weight, but they can also cost more than a heavy-weight.

I’ve taken Ghost for a short spin, and it’s the most enjoyable CMS I’ve touched. The writing interface is attractive and uncluttered, and I love that it has spell check. You do pay for it though; an out-of-the-box Ghost setup costs more than any other option on the list.

Ghost or one of it’s competitors is a suitable starter for my client. The high cost may serve as a motivator to publish her work regularly and share it with others. I’d suggest a monthly commitment to develop a publishing rhythm on beautiful and managable software, but not a yearly commitment because this option is too expensive for a long-term site.

Light-weights

Light-weights attract the opposite spectrum from the heavy-weights; the technical crowd. While the heavy-weights market to the technology illiterate and businesses who’ll pay a consultant to operationalize their Wordpress site and the middle-weights serve a writing niche who favor simplicity and beauty, light-weights attend to the technology savvy. Since they’re a thin layer above directly hosting one’s content on a cloud provider’s VM, these manage to keep costs low and hand most tasks over to the owner.

I spun up an instance of the Netlify CMS for a test-drive. Netlify’s core business is a hosting platform IMO, so I didn’t expect their CMS to be as robust as others I’d seen. Sure enough, it had just enough to get a user going on the web. I did appreciate that most of the technical steps I’d expected to do myself were automated. Not quite sure my client would ever want to perform a setup, but she’d be comfortable with the CMS itself.

The advantage of a service like Netlify is my client’s access to a professional (me). I can configure any one of the numerous blog software programs and put it on Netlify’s platform, where it will run at lower cost than any other option. The downside is that my client may need to conform to a more technical publishing workflow, like the use of a source control program. If my client could overcome that hurdle with my help, however, this would be an ideal long-term approach; not because Netlify will endure the test of time, but because a developer could move these building blocks anywhere, anytime.

Review

My client isn’t ready to commit to online publishing today, but when she is, there are endless options. After research and reflection, my recommendation at this time is a middle-weight service like Ghost or Craft to get into the flow and share her content immediately and often. I’d suggest that we maintain her content in a way that it can be migrated to another tool in six months. I’d set a three-month check-in to find out if she’s ready to have a long-term plan and, if her work is taking off, I’d begin consulting with her to configure a robust and long-term approach she can use for the next five years and beyond.