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Update: this post excludes WordPress and any other CMS for blogs for that matter. It is intended to make you aware that CMS systems  for static and e-commerce sites are not very reliable.

I was about to write a post about the advantages and disadvantages of managing as site trough a content management system (CMS). But on a second thought I decided to write this piece of literature, because CMS is certainly something I wouldn’t recommend to any of my clients.

The only “pro” CMS I see is the ease for updates. If you update your site on daily basis, CMS is a logical choice. Many such systems are quite easy to use and don’t require advanced web programming skills. Not at the first sight.

Content Management Systems (CMS) Disadvantages

  1. CMS generated web pages do not index properly in the search engines. CMS focuses on providing means to update content fast and easy but it doesn’t really do it in a search engines friendly manner. It also generates duplicate pages, sometimes hundreds of pages with similar content. Eshops are the best example for content managed solutions that are far from being SE friendly.
  2. The google crawl robots are sometimes helpless in front of CMS operated sites. The CMS needs a directory structure, or else the search robot will find itself in the impossibility to scan the pages properly.
  3. CMS is expensive to purchase and it even costs money to upgrade. There are some free CMS like Joomla! (considered the best open source content management software) but the fact that it is freeware doesn’t weight enough to compensate for the other 6 cons.
  4. CMS costs more to host too. It is delusional to believe that cheap web hosting will do for all the resources needed by the CMS and your content. Because CMS is one resource hungry bastard. You need to run it on a good server, with good maintenance, preferably choose a web host that provides instant backups in its plans and don’t go for the cheapest plan. If you need CMS you have to pay the price.
  5. Although freeware, you’ll need to hire and train people to work with it especially when you have a site that has over 1000 pages. CMS costs a lot to maintain and even when you can upgrade your pages easily, some aspects still need the skilled touch of a web developer. And finding a skilled web developer to fix CMS troubleshoots… well, that’s a different story. Actually it is like looking for a needle in a tray of hay.
  6. CMS is a system that needs periodic upgrades. The web technologies are changing quite fast and there are no warranties whatsoever that the CMS you are using today will still be compliant and compatible in two-three years.
  7. When CMS systems crash, everything crashes. Your meta tags disappear, your page titles are replaced by some automate crap and repeated on every page of your site (your shortest ticket to google exclusion – page titles are seen as micro content and even micro content needs to be unique).

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