148. Should I Build a CMS or Should I Buy One?

Should I build a custom content management system (CMS) or should I buy one and make it work? What should I think about when considering building a CMS? These are the questions we will answer in today's episode of Dev Questions.

[adelhishem]

Glad to hear a clear straight answer instead of "it depends on". This brought a great insight to the topic. Thanks for sharing.

[DanTheMan_]

Great insight! Our organization struggled from this being one of the first online organizations in the early 2000s. We have had the conversation for years about moving to an out of the box CMS, however, we are still working under a highly customized legacy system. The migration itself would be a massive effort and like you said, we are focused on features and maintenance/migration efforts are at the bottom priority.

[webluke]

I interned at the end of college at a place that was in the process of moving to a new CMS. The staff was very against the move and process. They were trying to figure out how to hand-type the instructions on how to build the 10, 000+ parts for their machines in the new system. The CMS company had a guy there working for over 2 months, trying to get things working. He would come to me to get help with the SQL and how to do things. The database was a mess, and it felt like they were sold a lot of marketing bs and not a good system.
I took the old DOS database and converted it using C# into a CSV file that I could copy and paste into a spreadsheet the CMS company provided that would run a macro to add the data to the database. The clunky old computer I used would take 45 minutes to run my program and another 2 hours to run the spreadsheet macros. A fun experience that made me question CMSs, but if you buy a CMS, there is a lot of value in it if it works as advertised.

[michael_azzer]

​ @IAmTimCorey I’m impressed by how you reply to every comment on your channel. Thank you for showing us that you care and value our feedback. You are awesome! :)

[AlfredMorganFishing]

My company has a 18 year old system right now that supports a lot of clients. A lot of custom CMS work, its very hard to find something that we could modify and bring over to existing system.

[nukeman]

I will do a *bee line* back to Umbraco CMS like I started with in the first place.
*Reason: 1* It's based on C# which I've used since framework 2.2
*Reason: 2* Like you mentioned in this video. "It's already completed"

[codyjmathis]

This is a good topic. There are deeper questions here though such as how many integrations between different systems, platforms and software is too many for a developer or team to maintain? No mater what, you’re going to be maintaining either your own software or your own integration between others. The later sounds easier but that is almost always not the case, in my experience.

[considercaption]

Just use payload. It’s a next js, typescript cms framework that’s completely customizable and looks good out of the box. Plus it’s open source. There’s no visual builder for designers unless you use vercel, but there is a content editor, admin console, custom components etc in the dashboard.

[lilcaesarman]

Thanks for this reality check :) I've been wanting to do one for years. I'm learning blazor so I could write the tool using that, but I haven't spent much time developing the tool. From this video, I will likely just build a shell of the tool for real-life experience 👍

[diorcula]

I am a student in Software Development, for an internship i am looking to do the case is that they want to move to a new CMS system as their website networks grow (10+ subdomains) and get more complex.

I am not really good with datasecurity, but do you reckon it would make sense to try and build CMS from scratch?

[aidennymes]

I've always coded my own software, never used premade libraries or frameworks. I've build everything imaginable. but this was all in my free time and just for educational purposes. in a professional work environment when you're working with clients, you should always use well tested and maintained base software for obvious reasons.

[Kokombads]

sir tim, do you have a video on how to create a project from start? i mean the step by step, like you're following waterfall model or something? or do you code right away? do you have a presentation about that?

[mikemurphy]

I've been watching enough of Tim's videos to know that this video can be distilled into a single comment... "It depends..." hahaahahaah🤣

[majidmajid]

Hi and thanks for your video... Your videos have a relationship with my problems always, and i really thank you for that.
Actually I'm in a company trying to make an ERP with just two developer! I can see without any doubt it can't be done in the way it should be done!
What do you recommend for this situation? Are you looking for new job or continue and try to do it as well as you can?

[MrSamurai]

@iamtimcorey Do you suggest CMS only for simple websites ? Will it not put limitations on what the application can do if I go CMS way? Now with technologies like Blazor, is it not better than CMS ?

[AlexC-jn]

I have an Access DB where we import excel spreadsheet from MAXIMO and from there we track work orders completed, inspected and then print reports. I have been thinking of developing a web application for this, but after watching your video, I am thinking maybe I need CMS. Do you have any recommendations of CMS I could use to recode my Access DB to web application? Thanks.

[dooley-ch]

A year late YES buy it, BUT and this is a very big BUT do. not modify it! Once you do that the total TCO will sky rocket.

[pxnchx]

What CMS providers would you recommend Tim?

[therealfodder]

As a developer that has to "wear many hats" this is the point I've been making with my colleagues. Leave the routine (and quite frankly boring!) web stuff to the experts in their field. We can get busy with the fun stuff - abstracted sites + micro services etc.

[anasssanba-kh]

i want to build a cms for e-commerce websites