Should a web developer use a Content Management System Software? [closed]

Question

First of all, I want to say that I can't find any satisfactory/reasonable answer to this question anywhere else. So, I thought I would ask it here. Sorry if this question is too vague to fit in here; I will try to be more specific.

Here are my questions.

1) Who are encouraged to use a Content Management System?

Are only non-technical persons who are not interested in learning programming/web-designing, or even programmers/developers are encouraged to solely depend on a CMS?

2) Does using a CMS limit our understanding?

I've heard people saying that CMSs limit us from understanding the inner functionalities of the working of the web server and security issues. For example, is it as straightforward as making a small change in the server's configuration file and restarting the server?

3) Don't we have more control on our website while using a CMS?

Control, in the sense of adding our own extra modules and different methods of doing a specific task (like processing a request) in a slightly advantageous way. For example, I heard a friend of mine saying that, it is much complicated with bring in our hard-coded design (using CSS) because affecting one slight design made unexpected changes in different pages.

4) How about using CMS for a web-based product/service?

As in a professional web application which expects more users and assuming that all the members of the development team are OK with hard coding. [Edit] There is a difference between a blogging website and a social networking site. In this context, I consider the social networking site more of a web-based service rather than a blogging website (which mostly is a personal website).

Someone also mentioned that, CMSs consume more resources. Is that true?

5) What would you suggest for a web designer/developer?

Your advice for a web developer who cares much about quality, scalability and security than trying to do things with ease.

Answer 1

To each of your questions.

1:Non-technical people without much programming experience, or for people who want to make general blogs/websites without much technical requirements. Yes you can create a basic website with CMS fairly quickly; but if you have any very technical back-end work (like FaceBook) it is best to actually script things instead of using a CMS.

2: In some situations. For very basic things like HTML you are not really missing out on that much understanding in functionality. But some CMS have plugins that have built-in tasks that without actually coding it your self or having enough experience to read over the source code you could not fully understand what exactly is happening and determine if it is the most efficient solution.

3: In general no, when using a CMS you are limited to what resources/plugins you can find. Of course most CMS allow you to add scripts to your website and make more personalized functionality; but compared to writing all the scripts yourself there is not as much customization.

4: You can use a CMS for a professional web application; but that again depends on your needs. If it is a application with simple technical needs then yes you can make it professional quality with only a CMS. But if it is very technical, it would probably be a better solution to actually code the application.

5: As a web-developer of 5 years experience I strongly prefer coding things myself because then I know exactly what is going on in my scripts; and my customization is only limited by my coding ability and not some platform. Of course if someone is not that programming savvy I would have to suggest using CMS because that be more reliable than having badly coded scripts created by someone who isn't very sure of what they are doing. But if they are comfortable in coding their application; I would strongly suggest that over CMS.