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Création de site ou application web !? Quelle technologie utiliser: CMS vs framework vs Custom

In this article, we’ll talk about the importance of choosing the right technology for your website or web application. We will see what to choose between CMS, frameworks and 100% custom programming by comparing these technologies to building a house. Choose the one that best suits your needs and budget.

Web programming is very similar to the world of building architecture.

To explain all this to you, we will therefore take the example of the construction of a house.

To start the most used: the CMS (content management system in French)

We could see it as an already built house that you could customize such as painting, changing the taps or the doors, and once finished you put your furniture. We can always break 1 wall to arrange a little, but that should remain an exception. If there are too many things to customize, it is always better to build as you wish from the start with a framework or 100% custom.

rather than fighting against the architecture that is already in place.

To illustrate this I will take you a showcase site With which you will use the cms wordpress which is best known for the example.

The architecture is already done, the house empty and all you have to do is personalize it.

Or if you buy what we call a theme, it will be a house with the kitchen, the toilets and the paint already done. All you have to do is put your own furniture there, which will be the text and images for a website, for example. And if you want to customize the visual, it’s very easy.

You can even add a bit more customization like a calculation tool or subscription tools. But the WordPress CMS was designed at the base with an architecture made for websites with a blog and even if we can add a lot of things like an online store or even make an eventual platform. Personalization will have these limits if we stray too far from that primary function.

For example, if you want to make a dating application, or an accounting management tool, you risk fighting against the machine. A bit like if someone would like to build a stable or a laundry in a residential house.

To conclude, as for the purchase of a house or a store, if your web or application needs are fairly standard, the cms will be a good option.

The main advantage is that the majority of the code is already done and solid.

All that will often remain is to do the rear touch-ups.

We will be able to see in a next video the different types of cms and for what use they are designed. For more advanced needs, we will now move on to our 2nd solution: the frameworks.

For the frameworks it’s the same we can come back to our example of the house.

Let’s say here that we want to build the house of our dreams with rooms personalized to our activities, like a chemist who would like to have a laboratory with dangerous liquids. Or a singer who has special storage and soundproofing needs.

For the web it’s the same thing, take for example, an application for the management of construction materials with many specific cases to set up. There are often existing applications but they may be too complicated or lack certain functionalities specific to your activity.

In this case, the Framework will be an extraordinary toolbox. With inside if we take the example of the building a bulldozer, the screwdrivers, the cement, the pipes for the plumbing, the doors, the electrical wires or even the wall pant already built. And all this with a plan on how to put them together and of course they will all be designed to be completely compatible together.

It will be necessary to determine with your architect what the needs are at the start so that he can make the plans and know what to use as tools. It is even possible to add additional tools to those that already exist and which will be compatible with the framework if necessary. They are called bookstores.

Once the plan is done, all that remains is to assemble everything with the developers to adapt to each task according to the size of your project.

Because as for the building, if you build a garden shed you can recruit a single craftsman who can do everything, whereas if you build a large building it will always be better to hire a painter, for example, to prevent the plumber or the architect finds himself doing the painting.

But that will be the subject of a future video where we can go into more detail about the construction.

This mode of construction has the advantage of being much more customizable and flexible than a Cms. It is often safer, more reliable and more stable, if it has been coded well of course. The possibilities are almost endless. On the other hand, it will take a little more time for programming, and therefore a little more budget.

Now that we have gone through the 2 options that will be the most common for most projects, there are certain very specific cases where the Framework is too big for our project and therefore not necessarily necessary. In this case we can also build 100% custom.

building your custom project is like building this house with just a trowel, concrete and bricks.

For a house it would also be to cut the doors or even buy some but have to adapt them to your building.

Building the plumbing ourselves or the like, going to buy everything and having to take the time to check if everything is compatible with the rest.

This kind of build mode is very flexible and very customizable. and will be adapted as we said for small projects, very specialized applications which have a very specific architecture.

Like for example a small application to make a calculation in chemistry or to extract data in an unusual technical environment.

You have understood this solution is not made to build a conventional site or application.

You can also use this programming mode to add just a little customization to an existing site or application.

The only things to select here will be the programming language:

To give you some examples, for a small tax calculation tool or an animation we will use Javascript. To do physics calculations or an artificial intelligence algorithm I would take Python. Or for a large infrastructure that will need very secure software with a specific architecture, we will use a lower level language such as Java for example.

100% custom programming is, as you can imagine, the longest and therefore generally the most expensive.

It has a much higher risk of error because you have to think about everything and forget nothing, such as security or code consistency throughout the application.

It can also create technical debt, because each developer codes this way and since there is no framework

If you need to add something to your application with a new developer, he must first understand what his predecessor wanted to do.

That said, with all the tools we currently have, it is increasingly rare to find cases that require customizing.

As for the construction of a house, the more we want something to personalize, the more we will move towards the framework or in some cases 100% custom. Whereas, as for the purchase of a house, if our needs are standard we can choose a solution already created with a cms and adapt it so that it looks like us without necessarily redoing everything. Which will therefore be faster and less expensive

If there will be one thing to remember for the construction of your site or web application it will be: The more personalized it is, the longer it is and therefore the more budget you will have to plan.