Why CMSes suck for front-end developers

3rd party CMSs seem like such a great thing when you first implement them. But after a while you always run into the things the author describes. There are simply no options out there that can compete with a simple CMS that you build from scratch.

Keep it simple, as in, a few textareas that accept HTML and spit it out verbatim. Deal with all the SEO bits such as good urls, meta descriptions, etc. so that it works in the correct way. Incorporate it into your actual site shell, as opposed to trying to create a fragile little WordPress theme that sorta looks like your site. Make it modular enough that you can drop it into every new project you do from here on out.

It'll take you two days to do this. If it takes longer, you're overengineering. Stop and redesign from scratch for the whole thing to live in two tables with a half dozen fields each. You don't need a little tree structure where you can drag nodes around, jQuery style. You just need a table full of content and a way to display it.

From there, it's maybe a few hours per existing site to rip out the garbage CMS you're currently using and retrofit yours in its place. You'll never look back.

Use a good web application framework and separate your front facing site from your content management system.

A CMS is lost if tries to dictate the HTML output, sadly most of them do.

My best bet is to use frameworks/libraries to achieve the needed features. I look at his as a Lego building project.