- The types of content management systems (CMS) that you can build your website with
- Some ideas for deciding between these options
What are the different ways to build a website?
In chapter 1 we saw the difference between rented digital space (eg. your profile on a social network) and owned digital space (eg. your website). There’s another consideration, what type of CMS (content management system) should you choose?
| Type | Functionality | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| Fully-owned CMS/website builders | These are ones where you have full ownership of the details and in theory can add any functionality you like, or pay someone to do this for you. In practice this is typically associated with open-source software (meaning there’s a marketplace of third party add-ons and plugins) and the option of hosting these on your own servers (or a web host’s). | |
| Walled-garden CMS/website builders | These are typically provided by a company (meaning they’re paid) and that company is responsible for all the functionality and options. They may allow third party integrations, they may not. Your favourite widget, plugin or service may or may not be compatible with these. | |
| Custom coded website | This is the most flexible option and can be definition compatible with any other service you wish it to be. However it’s also the most expensive and time-consuming to set up and maintain. | Most enterprise websites |
Which one should you choose?
The table above represents a tradeoff between flexibility, functionality, choice and setup cost:
You probably don’t need something fully custom-coded unless your website is doing something revolutionary. Chances are it’s not and that’s ok. Delivering great content and selling great products/services is one way to stand out but those things can be achieved with pretty standard, off-the-shelf solutions.
Walled-garden website builders are typically easier to set up and the quality of the functionality is high since the company controls all of the options, widgets and integrations. However they may have higher ongoing costs (the company needs to charge you a recurring subscription) and some functionality that you might need may just not be there.
Conversely, fully-owned and self-hosted website builders/CMSes take longer to set up but there is much more opportunity to customise. A drawback of a big marketplace of ecosystems is that there will be lots of options to pick from, some of which are low quality.
Overall, only you can decide what’s best for you. However, you should be aware that it’s easy to get started in a walled-garden type website (eg. Shopify for an ecommerce store) only to find later on that you will need something self-hosted, meaning you will need to rebuild things. All things being equal, if you can afford the time (or some help) in building a self-hosted solution now, it can make it easier to add more functionality and evolve your website as your organisation grows. This does come with a tradeoff too, in that you’ll need a more active hand in maintaining your website so that it works well.
Another pain point we see with walled-garden websites and apps is their compatibility with your performance tracking tools like Google Analytics. Almost every CMS will allow you to add your own tracking codes — if not, please put it straight in the bin!. However, even some very popular platforms (like Shopify) do make it harder or impossible to implement more advanced reporting/tracking features. This might not be that relevant to you but you may want to see chapter 13 and chapter 19 before you sign on the dotted line for a CMS that does restrict you.
