SunTech SolutionsPublished · SunTech Solutions
Two ways to build the same page
A static website is a folder of finished pages. Each page is a file, written once and served to every visitor exactly as it is. There is no login, no database and nothing running on the server except the program that hands out files. To change a page, someone edits the file and uploads it, or runs a build step that regenerates the folder.
A content management system, or CMS, keeps the pages in a database and assembles them when a visitor asks. WordPress is the one most small businesses meet, and it is a fair example of the whole category: an admin screen anyone can log into, a theme that decides the look, plugins that add features, and a database that holds the content. To change a page, someone logs in and types.
Both can produce the same page for the visitor. The difference is everything around it.
What decides it
| Question | Static site | CMS |
|---|---|---|
| Who changes the content | A developer, or a staff member with a build step and an hour of training | Anyone with a login, from any browser |
| How often it changes | A few times a year | Weekly or daily: news, listings, a blog |
| Speed | As fast as a page can be; nothing is computed per visit | Depends on hosting, theme and plugins; needs caching to keep up |
| Security and upkeep | Nothing to update; almost nothing to attack | Core, theme and plugins need updating; the unpatched sites are the ones that get hacked |
| Hosting cost | Low; often a few dollars a month | Higher; a server or managed hosting, plus backups and a firewall |
| A second language | A second set of pages, kept in step by hand | A plugin; the good ones are paid and need updating too |
| Forms, bookings, payments | Through outside services, each chosen for the job | Through plugins, or a platform built for it |
| Moving to another provider | Copy the folder | Export the database and hope the theme and plugins come along |
The five questions that settle it
- Who will edit the site in a year? Not who wants to now: who actually will. If the honest answer is "we will ask the developer", a CMS buys you an admin screen nobody uses and a maintenance bill for it.
- How often does the content genuinely change? Prices, hours, a new photo twice a year is static territory. A blog, job postings or a product list that changes every week is what a CMS is for, or a static site with a generator that staff can use.
- Who will keep it updated and backed up? A CMS is software on a public server. Someone has to apply updates, keep backups and notice when a plugin has broken the site. If nobody on staff will, that is a monthly fee to someone who will.
- Do visitors need to log in, or buy? Accounts, carts, member areas and bookings are where a static site stops and a platform or a CMS starts. Decide which of them you actually need before you let them decide the whole site.
- Will the site be bilingual? A second language doubles the pages either way. On a static site that is a second folder and a translation; on a CMS it is a plugin, and the plugins that do it well cost money and need updating like everything else.
The middle options
The choice is less binary than it used to be. A static site can be generated from plain text files by a tool, so a staff member who can edit a document can edit the site, and a developer is needed only when the design changes. A static site can take a form through a form service, a booking through a booking service and a payment through a payment page, each one a specialist's product rather than a plugin. And a CMS can be used purely as the editing screen for a site that is still published as static files, which keeps the editor and drops most of the maintenance. These are the arrangements we reach for most often, because they give a business the one thing it wanted from a CMS, which is editing, without the parts it did not.
What we would pick, by kind of site
- A brochure site: services, who you are, how to reach you, changed a few times a year. Static. It will be faster, cheaper to keep and safer than any CMS, and the yearly change is an hour of a developer's time.
- A site with news, a blog or listings that someone on staff updates every week. A CMS, or a static site with a generator and a short training session. Choose by who will do the updating and whether they will also maintain a CMS.
- A store. Neither, really: a platform built for selling, with a static or CMS site around it for everything that is not the shop.
- A site in English and Chinese for a local business. Static, with the two languages built as two parallel sets of pages and the language tags and structured data done properly, which is a job in itself.