CMS101
This will likely be a very basic question...but I can't find any info online that lays out an answer clearly...it seems there's a disconnect for intermediate developers like myself. All of the tutorials either start out too basic or too complex.
For example, you know how there's the basic website building platforms for the average consumer looking to start their "side hustle" - Squarespace, Wix, Wordpress, etc. Well, I've found them to be mostly garbage. I mean, they're useful for that market segment, but their themes are usually too simple, and they have a ceiling as far as capabilities, right?
Most experienced developers opt for custom HTML/CSS/PHP websites, because this option is more flexible and scalable, right? If they aren't building something from scratch they're using a template website from places like ThemeForrest, Envato, and Adobe Stock. As an intermediate developer, I opt for these templates for the same reasons.
I've downloaded dozens of template websites and have them hosted on NameCheap, which uses cPanel, which is why I'm asking this here. And I've found they all have built in features, like blogs, in particular, but no documentation on how to "activate" those features. Manually maintaining a blog in HTML is obviously not an option...so, my question is, how do you all install a CMS to manage this content?
I know Wordpress forces a pre-built theme to be installed, and I assume the custom CSS option doesn't really help much to get a blog section looking consistent with the rest of the site. Am I wrong? Every other CMS in NameCheap's cPanel-Softaculous (Concrete, HTMLy, etc.) uses themes as well, and I don't see away to bypass that and integrate it into an existing site.
The one thing I have found that seems to be working so far isn't offered in cPanel - Perch. I know it's somewhat of a pain to set up initially, but once you have the apps installed, templates created, and functions firing correctly, it should do the trick, right? I just don't get why HTML/CSS templates are so prevalent, but the tools to actually make them literally function as "designed" are so obscure.
So before I commit to Perch, I wanted to get some answers to the above, somehow, someway. It's been bugging me for a while.
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Hey there! You'll likely get other answers from the community as well, and this is just my opinion, but that's why you often see blog pages have a slightly different format than the rest of the site - they just setup WordPress, get a theme that's close enough, and call it good.
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Yeah, "close enough" is not how I want to present my businesses or my clients'. So, I guess I wasn't mistaken though.
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Nope, you were 100% correct.
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