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“You should never build a CMS”

(www.sanity.io)
140 points handfuloflight | 4 comments | 14 Dec 25 05:38 UTC | HN request time: 0s | source
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d--b ◴[14 Dec 25 07:51 UTC] No.46261479[source]▶
I have built several small websites in the past that were updated by non tech people.

I have tried, believe me, to make CMS work. I really did. But every time the customer came back with “can I do this or that” and inevitably, it fell in a blind corner of the CMS engine I was trying to use.

In the end, I developped something where the structure of the site matched a folder structure, setup a dropbox auto sync, and let the customers write anything they needed using markdown for content and yaml for metadata.

Sure, it didn’t do a hundredth of what the cms did, but it did what the customers needed. it took me less time to build this than to actually install/understand a cms system.

If I did have AI back then, it would have been even faster for me to build that stuff.

At some point, it just helps you get shit done.

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1. mabedan ◴[14 Dec 25 08:58 UTC] No.46261758[source]▶
> something where the structure of the site matched a folder structure

Kirby?

replies(1): >>46261910 #
2. d--b ◴[14 Dec 25 09:36 UTC] No.46261910[source]▶
That was my first try, but many things were missing from Kirby for what the customer wanted.
replies(1): >>46261972 #
3. omnimus ◴[14 Dec 25 09:53 UTC] No.46261972[source]▶
I am curious what was possible with yaml+md files that was impossible with flat file CMS. Afaik flat file CMSes are basically glorified .md editors.
replies(1): >>46266271 #
4. d--b ◴[14 Dec 25 20:00 UTC] No.46266271{3}[source]▶
The markdown didn’t help with anything that CMS couldn’t do. But special sections of pages would render differently based on the yaml configs.

You may think of it as: for each page, the yaml contained the React props to render. I d write the the main components, and the user would inject content through yaml as they saw fit.