Hand Crafted vs. CMS

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Hand Crafted vs. CMS

when to switch?

whoyou

5:00 am on Nov 4, 2006 (gmt 0)

Hello all,

I'm at a point where crafting everypage is or could be hampering revenue and time to launch.

When is the right time if any to switch from the good ole.. hand crafted (static) to the spit me out CMS.

These are sites currently built in pure CSS and static HTML with content reaching around 350 words.

I'm running out of daylight and the coffee shop is closed after 1am so another words what to do?

Thanks!

jetteroheller

6:02 am on Nov 4, 2006 (gmt 0)

I started with the Internet autumn 1996 and wrote my first CMS autumn 1997.

I had at this time my first big contract for a web site
150 pages Geramn
150 pages English

After having experience with all the failures on an other web site with only 20 pages German, 20 pages English, I decided to write a software, which is today called CMS.

I worked 2 month on the CMS and did nothing with the clients site. I changed an other 2 weeks my own site to the CMS. After all was successfull, I created the clients site.

I think without CMS, I would have later finished, even when I had to invest 2.5 month to start.

Etonian

6:49 am on Nov 4, 2006 (gmt 0)

There's a forum here at webmasterworld dedicated to the topic:

[webmasterworld.com...]

ceweman

2:35 pm on Nov 5, 2006 (gmt 0)

My own CMS was the first step to start Adsense publishing. I have done it on my own, without any unsafety GNU/GPL systems. I am using CMS, which is 100% valid (HTML+CSS), is 100% on-page SEO (CoolURIs, H1, H2, H3..), my own photogallery system, newsletter submit + newsletter sending and some other useful scripts (e.g. 404 error reporting [what is missing and from where is it called], banner manager, search statistics and other..).

I am very satisfied, becouse I am spending only a few time to add one article (10-15 minutes with formating and image gallery).

mertero

4:50 pm on Nov 5, 2006 (gmt 0)

I recently made the switch myself.

I changed from hand-made static HTML to CMS (Drupal).

I actually saw a surge in all parameters - revenue has doubled or so, and also there are a lot more impressions.

Several explanations: Now that I have a CMS, I have RSS feeds, and comments, and users, etc. It means that people 'enjoy' the site more, they get regular RSS updates, and other sites are 'picking' up my RSS feeds.

Also, now I have much more pages in my site. I used to attach photo-thumbnails to posts. Now I attach a full picture, which Druapl puts as a thumbnail with a link to the original large photo. So some people click on it, and view yet another page, with ads and all. Good for me!

whoyou

5:26 pm on Nov 6, 2006 (gmt 0)

Thanks guys, I'll have a look into the Drupal.

PotteryCentre

3:55 pm on Nov 7, 2006 (gmt 0)

I handcrafted my site for 3.5 years, the process of creating pages was very painful. A couple of months ago, I tried to install Joomla CMS.

After that, creating a page is a lot faster, and I can focus more on my content rather than waisting a lot on time in hand coded the individual page.