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General Discussion

Posted by csj
csj
12,678 Points

Maintain a large site without a CMS like WordPress

Are there good ways or tools to maintain a site with a CMS like WordPress?

I'm getting more and more frustrated with "lack" off or difficulty with controlling the outputted markup. If I just created my own files I can get a lot more stuff working than if I have to try and tie it all into WordPress. I would like more "freedom" :)

But what other options are there?

John Nixon
John Nixon
17,690 Points
John Nixon
John Nixon
17,690 Points

With WordPress you can create your own theme and have complete control over the output, but there are other options, you could also create a site using a static generator like Jekyll where you would have the benefit of partials, includes, markdown, without a CMS.

3 Answers

Kevin Korte
Kevin Korte
28,149 Points
Kevin Korte
Kevin Korte
28,149 Points

Build your own CMS, that's what I do now, if I'm messing around with different applications. Wordpress can do a lot, but what it won't do, I just build the back end myself.

csj
csj
12,678 Points
csj
csj
12,678 Points

I wish I could Kevin. But I'm not as skilled as you :) I can't build my own CMS... at least not yet.

Btw, is there a course on Treehouse that touch on this subject?

Kevin Korte
Kevin Korte
28,149 Points
Kevin Korte
Kevin Korte
28,149 Points

Naw, you can do it!

What kind of site are you building? There are quite a few things you can do with wordpress, to make it really look and function how you need it.

Building your own CMS isn't as scary as it sounds. There really isn't any video courses on it, but if you start to learn how to use a backend language to output information and views to the client, you can do the exact some thing to build your own admin dashboard. There is no magic to it, really.

But I really have to advise against building and maintain a large site without a CMS. What you think you might be saving in time, energy, and headache on the front end, you are going to end up paying dearly for on the backend, and at some point the site might scale to the point is actually very impractical to continue to maintain it.

csj
csj
12,678 Points
csj
csj
12,678 Points

Well Kevin, I am actually building a WordPress site with a custom theme based on underscores_, using a lot of CMB2 metaboxes. I just found it, I don't know, messy :)) Perhaps it is just my lack off skills, experience and expertise.

John Nixon
John Nixon
17,690 Points
John Nixon
John Nixon
17,690 Points

CMB2 is a great plugin for setting up custom fields and it can just flat out do things other field plugins can't do. I would highly recommend sticking with CMB2, but if you would like a quick way to set up the fields that seems less messy, try ACF.