Personally i am not a fan of CMS, Joomla,XOOPS,drupal, Mambo, just name them, i think the make you lazy as a developer, and the make you over dependent on them, every time you want to do something, you have to start running around for modules, i see who ever uses them as a L**Y developer.
I prefer writing my own classes when i am less busy, and integrating them when ever i need them as the need arises

What would have happen if the was no CMS wouldn't we still have developed our sites etc. Let the abuses begin

I don't think that using a CMS makes one lazy. Having said that, I am not saying you should use it for a 5-page website. It has its place. Let me give some history:

Back in the day (I am talking 1997 or so), you could only code using notepad. While this was good, it made sense to "automate" the process. Hence WYSIWYGs were born. Again back then, a website had content (text), presentation (what we use CSS for now) and (what we use javascript for now) all on the page. In other words, if Mr. A wanted me to change "a bottle" to "some bottles", I the developer had to do that. It only took time before developers started saying, "hey, I am paid to develop, not copy and paste/type english. Enter the CMS.

Note that CMS stands for "Content Management System". In other words, its first goal is to manage the "english" part of the site. You code, provide the "spots" for content and a non-developer can go to the necessary portions within the CMS to add the content (english).

Of course, knowing us humans, we aren't okay with the status quo. Soon enough, developers were like, "I think it would be cool if we could go beyond the standard template and customize the CMS to something that fits our needs", hence the various modules, extensions, components, etc. In the end, we are all better for it as developers.

Conclusion:
You can't call ppl who use CMS as Lazy (Assuming the 2 "*"s are for "A" and "Z" ). CMSs if used properly can be very efficient and especially so for the non-developer out there - you code it, they go in on the backend and add content. If you feel that any of the CMS tools don't have what you need (and I personally don't see this happening but what do I know?), there is nothing wrong in building something to your taste. While you are at it, think of making money off of it by marketing it to the outside world. As it is, I am sick and tired of seeing all the cool stuff advertised internationally coming from oyibos

Right on spot yawa, i agree totally with you on that one. It is just that we have some olode-web-designers that bank fully on the cms
with no customization whatsoever and so they give cms a bad name.

So if you are going to use cms or dreamweaver, at least learn how to code well first, so you wont do rubbish.

dhtml:

Right on spot yawa, i agree totally with you on that one. It is just that we have some olode-web-designers that bank fully on the cms
with no customization whatsoever and so they give cms a bad name.

So if you are going to use cms or dreamweaver, at least learn how to code well first, so you wont do rubbish.

. . .Please don't sacrifice him, na oversabi dey worry em,
BTW wat's the big deal using CSM? yawa na wa for some ppl oh.

Ztyle, which one come be ur own, look i am not a cms fan period, i know CMS power some of the internet big wigs like exeapedia,bbc,digg etc. But i just believe if u r over reliant on it, u will soon 4get how to echo"ztyle", nothing worry me. Imagine FaceBook as CMS.

Hmm. . . Nice to get together again.

Back to the topic, Somehow I get the feeling this is not so much about content management systems in general as it is about "open-source" content management systems. I say that because almost every medium to large website today uses a content management system in one form or another.

I am a fan of CMSs, but that does not mean I don't know how to code or that I am a lazy developer. I started out some years back with notepad, onto Homesite and then Dreamweaver. In between Homesite and  DW, I dabbled with Frontpage. FP didn't go too well.
With regards to CMSs, it depends on what you want to do really. If you need a 5-page brochure website, you are better off coding it yourself. Generally, sites with less than 20 pages are better hand-coded.
However, if you need a website that'll grow with time and you want to be able to manage that growth easily, then you really are better off getting a CMS to do the job. Imagine a 100-page website with lots of images and maybe video content. You really think hand-coding such a website is a great idea when you have access to some really powerful systems which are capable of drastically reducing your development time and time-to-market? I don't care if you develop the CMS yourself or you buy or download it, it's still a CMS.

The fact is there is a worrying trend of over-dependence on content management systems today especially among budding Nigerian developers or "web designers", leading to some really half-baked products (e.g www.ntdc.gov.ng). However, it is no reason to paint developers who use CMSs with a broad brush of incompetence. The fact that anyone relies on hand-coding does not neccesarily make him/her a good/bad developer. It doesn't make one superior to the other.
I can assure you the guys who work with the BBC or CNN content management systems don't consider themselves inferior to the HTML guru who probably developed the drudgereport.com
The mere fact that there is a content management system does not mean there is already a website. It simply means there is a framework in place for me to develop my site on. I have personally had to create custom modules and templates for a content system, and I am currently working on such a site which requires me to create custom modules and components. Now, if I were to create everything from scratch, how much time and money will that cost me? Remember, time is money (for you the developer as well as your client).

There is the need to encourage "web designers" to add a "personal touch" when deploying a content management system, but the notion that using a content management system to develop scaleable websites is a sign of laziness, is seriously flawed.

cyberomin:

Ztyle, which one come be ur own, look i am not a cms fan period, i know CMS power some of the internet big wigs like exeapedia,bbc,digg etc. But i just believe if u r over reliant on it, u will soon 4get how to echo"ztyle", nothing worry me. Imagine FaceBook as CMS.

. . .real webmaster don't talk too much, . . ._{hiss & walk away}

ztyle:

. . .real webmaster don't talk too much, . . ._{hiss & walk away}

Ha Ba, wetin now, make the guy express himself now. But what u said is . . .

. . which kind express? abeg bros free me i no get time for all dis kind ppl.

pie1ct,

As always, a well-written piece.  Welcome back!  Hopefully you won't go back undercover again

Speaking of NTDC, I can now c y cyberimon would say that such ppl r lazy - they didn't even bother removing the "resources" and the other module on the left hand side.  Then again, the originator of the contract probably charged millions before paying 10K to the person he subcontracted it to. As I have always said, sometimes you get what you pay for.

God help us all!

God help us all!

. . and bless u the more.

Interesting. . .

The truth be said. CMS is still the best bet, tis not easy to be using old age to learn codes.

How many programming languages do u want to learn. As you are writing a code in one laguage, you will come to learn again that your work will be better if you used another language, and all that.

CMSes have made the job easier, all you need to do is customise to fit your requirements.

UHmm , well, i suppose shut up my mouth coz am new to these things but let me tell all of you my assuption !
DO YOU BELIEVE OYINBOs HIDE 80% OF WHAT THEY REALLY KNOW ABOUT ALL THESE PROGRAMING LANGUAGES ?

anybody believe that ?
well, to my own little view, even after glancing thru contents of the best ebook to teach any of these programming languages, I laugh and say see these Oyinbos , they will all wanna make money ! THEY WONT TEACH EVERYTHING !
the worst deciever is these video tutorials i so much hate !!! the books even far better ( but most people love watching these videos coz them they hear OYINBO voice )
Image , i have never seen any Nigerian develop CMS ! talk of forums ? blogs? and many more which requires expert and excellent skills in programming ! abeg se, no be human being write all these things you edit to you own taste and use?

There is no gain saying,  that the 1st world have more advanced technology in this area you just mentioned. It would be waste of time & energy to try to reinvent the wheel expecially when it is been giving away for free to anyone who wants it.

The truth be said, this does not end with programming/CMS or computers alone, our entire being is such that we pick up from whatever the white guys have already put in place,

The english language we speak and write today was started by them, the computers, T.vs, internet, modern day Religion, medical equipments, programming languages and all technologies are their inventions, we the black guys are only users.

Technology arm of the black world led by Nigeria is dead, or so it seem,

The only way we beat them is in our ability to use our heads to loophole their technologies to our benefits ,  if you know what I mean,

CMS is still the best. if we like it or not.

Yawa, thanks. I'm back for now.
I've ben quite busy lately, what with me trying to bring about world peace and all (_{lame attempt at sarcasm}). I got a site for you to test. I'll send you the link later.

@topic
How did this thread become about "oyinbos"?

Content management systems can be created by anyone, if you have the time. It's not rocket science. With a little bit of PHP and MySQL, you could be on your way to your own CMS.

pie1ct,

I will be looking out for the link.  Welcome back once again.  I just visited webmag and noticed you changed the skin.  Looks good as always.  I also browsed a few articles and they are as always, well written too.

How's traffic to webmag? Seems like it should be getting a lot.

welcome back once again.  I for one miss your posts

Love the NTDC site graphics and layout. Onlu problem I have is that they forgot to remove the default Modules and sections of the page that were mainly for samples.

I have a Joomla installation on my system and drupal, but I havent gotten to using them yet. Am in a stage of determining what best to use for sites, am better in JSP, Servlet, JSF , know PHP to a comfortable level, and still crawling on C# with ASP.NET.

What I noticed in recent times is that its your page layout that matters most and thats why am currently dusting my CSS books and trying to improve on my graphics.

That said, there are so many web jobs to be done, and any form of hastening the development as long as quality is not compromised should be seen as a good idea. CMS is great and does what it does, makes it easy for managing web contents.

Am starting an online web magazine for my school, and I'll jump at the idea of having a framework that allow my Freelancers and News Editors (with no programming skills) update the web easily without disturbing me from my Coffee(Java, other jobs, or gals).