Flat File CMS: Where's The Breaking Point?

[turbin3]

Paralysis

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I've heard a lot more about various flat file cms' over the past year, and have been seriously looking at a few. One of my goals is scaling my own content production a bit. I am definitely one who has a constant struggle with paralysis by analysis. Put too many variables in front of me, and it's easy for productivity to suffer. Though, on the flip side, I'm often able to soak in those variables and develop deep insights that most might not have. There's always trade-offs.

If it's any indicator, even a standard WYSIWYG Wordpress editor is sometimes a bit much for me, as I sometimes fall into the trap of worrying about formatting, switching between the visual/code....when I just need to write the damn content and get it out. I have no problem getting into the code, and realize many of these flat file cms' need a lot of coding to get setup. My whole deal is, I want to get into the code, get it done, and get out, so I can focus on content.

Do it For Yourself

Outsourcing is not an option for some of the sites I'm thinking of, as it's content I must create myself, being an SME on certain subjects. Suffice to say, some subjects demand in depth knowledge from the writer, and my focus will be in putting out the highest quality, most technologically correct information on those subjects. I use outsourced content when I need to, for other uses, but not for these.

Point of No Return

So my primary question is, where's the breaking point with a flat file cms? At what points does one become unsustainable to use. Is there a "ceiling" where, above a rough number of pages, things simply become unmanageable? Are there performance issues if you reach or exceed this ceiling? Again, I'm falling a bit into the analysis trap, but I do want to ensure I'm building a solid foundation for some of these sites. It would suck building one for years, only to find that I have to revert back to WP and migrate thousands of pieces of content to keep things running smoothly.

The Goal

In terms of what types of sites I'm talking about, I'm thinking primarily of a few simple, blog-style sites, mostly focused on things I enjoy or have significant knowledge and experience with. A digital memory dump if you will. I would probably create a significant amount of content on them, somewhat as also a personal exercise in helping balance my paralysis with action. Most of those sites would not have any complex functionality.

Will it Scale?

I do have one magazine/news-style site planned, and the current plan likely will be to use WP with Thrive Themes' Performag theme, as the company seems stable, responsive, has good support, and that theme seems fairly streamlined for productivity. For what could become a large, active site with a lot of content (as well as taking on other writers), I'm guessing a flat file cms, such as Ghost with the GhostWall theme will probably be too limiting.

Flat file cms I've looked at: Ghost, Phile. I'm liking Ghost, as it seems to be catching on and developing a decent community around it. Any opinions on Ghost, especially if any of you have experience with sites like anything I've described? Anything I'm overlooking or overthinking?

 

[CCarter]

I think it really depends on your end goal for the website, and what you envision. If you envision having some day employees or (employees of people that you sold your website to) editing the website, you'll have to go with something that's easy with a low learning curve. But now you are in a situation where you have to go with the defacto solution, Wordpress, which is not as great at it used to be - due to employees being trained or familiar with it at some level.

So what's the real end goal. If it's a site where I don't anticipate non-techies editing the front-end, then I go with what I prefer. I haven't tried all the flat-file CMSes since I honestly don't have time for every new shiny object. I usually can tell how easy or difficult a CMS will be simply by going through the installation process. If I have to upgrade php or some other nonsense it's not worth my time, unless my user experience is beyond great. But if I'm at the "install it on my server" level I've probably have considered it for a number of days and have already done research.

The benefit of flat-file is there is no database to hack, low latency since it is ALMOST static, and no real admin area to get control of - except some of these flat-files do create an admin section, so that negates some portions. Now here is the real kicker, flat files are written physically to the sub-directory. But if you notice when you implement a new page, that page automatically gets added to the framework - how? And this is where the weakness comes in. Each file has to be read EVERY TIME the page is rank to get the metadata of it's title, etc. PhileCMS attempt to solve this by not having each file get 'completely' read, but only the metadata. Still if your site is thousands of pages, that'll create latency which a database driven CMS wouldn't have. So I use a 30 minute caching plugin that saves each file and hardcodes it to the cache directory, eliminating the need for constantly reading all pages. That right there NOW makes it faster and better then database driven CMSes.

Pick one that you are comfortable with and just go.

Also, I've been victim of browser reloads/refreshes deleting my content as I wrote it in Wordpress or on forums (luckily BuSo has an automatic safe draft feature, so we don't lose long text). But being a victim of that for so long I learned a long time ago to use TextEdit (notepad on windows) to write all my content, then paste it into the editor and format it there, so at least I don't get screwed up and have to re-write everything from scratch, even this reply is written in textedit first.

Also, I just wrote about more Google spying within Wordpress's administration section (for your PBN owners out there): Google Is Spying On You With Fonts!

 

[Samwise89]

If your site is going to be huge, a database will make it manageable on the backend. For your site to be that big, you'll probably end up hiring writers. Consider the needs of your helpers too. If you can't figure it out, they definitely won't be able to

 

[Tung Tran]

Don't worry about the problem you are not having. Wordpress is working just fine for starter or medium sites. There are many big sites started out with WP and eventually moved into their own platform. But when you're big with tons of resources (money, dev team, etc), you could totally do it easier.

For now, just get the site up and running. Have some content created. Promote the hell out of it. Make some money. When you get to Mashable or ViralNoval level, it's time to think about this.