You have built your beautiful static website with all the fancy HTML et al. Unfortunately, for every minor change you want to do, you have to go back to your devs. And now you are looking to hook it up with a CMS, is it the case with you too?

As a part of the content team of a constantly evolving product, zipboard, we have to make some changes(content,media font,theme etc.) to the website every now and then and it becomes quite hectic for us to reach out to the developers for every petty change to the website. So to avoid the daily fuss, we decided to go for a CMS. Deciding to opt for a CMS was easy but to decide which one to choose is not that simple.

One quick search for CMS, and you will get numerous names and options to choose from. Drupal, Joomla, Jekyll, and what not!

Before we dig deeper into it, let me introduce you to what actually a CMS is :

A content management system (CMS) stores page content in a database and provides facilities to edit and apply themes. Management becomes easier at the expense of flexibility, performance, server requirements, security and backups. In simple terms, it lets you edit your websites using simple tools , a pre-packaged backend to your websites.

Now the question haunting us and probably you too is “How do you find,what suits you the best?”

As per the discussions I have gone through from different sources like Reddit, Sitepoint, Designer News etc, the major problem scenarios are :

Dynamic/Mixed resource project with non tech CMS users

Dynamic/Mixed resource project with developers as CMS users

A project with only static resources

A complicated project with large user-base and size.

Which includes our’s too.So I have tried to come up with a solution here,for each of the case mentioned above; according to the experiences shared by people in various discussions aimed at solving the problems faced by others in choosing the right CMS for them.

To be able to answer which one to go for, let’s see what are the questions that you would need to answer first

Does it allow custom HTML or do I have to go with standard themes?

2. Does it need dev effort?

3. Does it support the complexity level of your project?

4. Which all programming platforms it supports?

5. Is it a static/dynamic file generator?

6. What hosting environments it supports?

Once you are ready with the answers, it’s now easy to formulate a strategy to begin with.

KIRBY

Kirby is nice option to start with, if your criteria include

maintaining a heavy database is not the requirement,

the resources are a mix of static and dynamic and

the CMS users are not developers.

It is a compromise between feature rich options like wordpress,drupal etc and static file generators like jekyll. It provides an optimum level of flexibility along with the lightweight advantages of a file based CMS. It has no database,everything is saved as a file. Kirby is great, simple and very focused.It would be a miss if I won’t mention its sister sites here, Kirby Plugins and Kirby Themes.

Kirby : A file based CMS

Pros

Simple workflow with fast responses.

With only a few plugins you can do everything in general.

Massive CMS and panel control

Clean markups

No database required.

Inbuilt caching ability.

Possible to integrate with MySQL and build JSON API

Even eCommerce is possible

Cons

Effective usage depends on size and complexity of the website.

ACID (Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) feature of databases is lost.

(Atomicity, Consistency, Isolation, Durability) feature of databases is lost. Everything is public.

Dynamic elements have limitations; also issues with device detection exist.

No WYSIWYG editor and drag-and-drop for page publish

Not possible to manually install plugins and customize plugin settings from front-end.

But for any small system it completely fits in. It’s surely a pick.

Pricing — $17 to $89 depending on requirements.

GRAV

You can go for Grav if :

the intended CMS users are developers who need to explore an advanced set of features.

The concerned project is not a complex commercial website with thousands of users and pages.

GRAV : A modern flat-file CMS

Pros:

Open source with easy backup/restore.

with easy backup/restore. Amazing media processing ability : You can crop,compress,add attributes to and resize any image with just single line twig code.

Caching capability : All the media changes are automatically saved in the server cache, until you delete it.

Own Package Manager : It makes experimenting with themes or skeletons quite easy. It also provides you with extended functionality in terms of free plugins(74),themes(33) & skeletons(21).

Console tools with debugging capabilities.

Multilingual support and version control

Cons :

Cannot handle projects with complex database requirements.

User needs to learn how to use markdown.

Manual modification & configuration is required for some features

JEKYLL

Try out Jekyll if:

The website resources are all static i.e. no dynamic blog/testimonial/… required.

You are comfortable with command line and use GitHub in your workflow or can consider using it.

The intended CMS user set need to work in developer’s environment.

Jekyll : A static CMS

Pros :

With jekyll content can be deployed simply on any of the host which takes up HTML input.

You can host your website/ blog for free from Github’s servers as jekyll is the CMS for Github pages as well.To know more on how to setup blog with jekyll and github refer here.

as jekyll is the CMS for Github pages as well.To know more on how to setup blog with jekyll and github refer here. Version control with Git

Easy to set up custom domains with in built SEO.

Lightweight architecture with no security worries.

Cons:

No media processing tools like for image crop/resize etc.

No authentication or broken link validation feature.

No way out to take inputs from website users like any contact/query form

All file are default output files; no way to customize it.

Fewer plugins,themes & search options

Pricing : Free hosting with Github.

CRAFT

An optimal choice for a complicated project can be Craft CMS. Although wordpress/drupal/joomla are most widely used with their rich feature set and numerous plugins available but when it comes to multilingual or hierarchical content is when the decision pays off. If you need to do something just basic then too craft proves to be a better option as you need not get into content structure or plugin setup.

Craft : A content first CMS

Pros :

No need to be an experienced user,to work swiftly & effectively.

The super consistent codebase/APIs and stellar documentation

Twig templating (although requires some learning)

Excellent community support

Update is as simple as a single click

Matrix and live preview features.

Cons:

Uses old PHP coding style

Still needs to be a part of large ecosystems for better adoption

Not open source

Pricing — $0 to $299 depending on requirements

At the end I would just like to add, analyse your project needs well, to end up finding the perfect CMS solution. If still you are confused with two-three options try them all once yourself, that’s the best possible way to ensure which one fits into your requirements the best.