I've been pondering this for awhile now, as one of my clients makes 99%-static websites for their marketing campaigns. They currently use Drupal as their CMS, but I see that as overkill, as most of the site is static and the layout shouldn't be changed by anyone with publishing rights. However, you wouldn't believe how hard it is to break through the "$CMS can do it all, easier, faster, and cheaper" thinking that has been sold to executives.<p>In my client's case, the only "content" that changes are blog posts, media (screens/videos) and, possible, promos on the front page. Everything else stays the same, 24/7/365. There is little reason spend money on using a CMS that can do everything, when a simple HTML/CSS/JS and a clean web framework (Django/Rails/Symfony) will do.<p>What I've attempted to explain to higher-ups is that website development should be built on progressive enhancement, because it is easy to start with something bare and add the features (models, callouts to external services) fairly easily and with little code. The flip side is that if you start with a kitchen-sink approach (a la Drupal/Joomla) you will need to take away features because the administrators will have too much power to change the site, increasing risk that something bad will happen.
Thing is, most companies, especially those with small budgets, don't give a shit about crazy UX, they just want a fairly attractive site that they can manage the pages and copy on. Then there are bigger companies with huge, expansive libraries of content who really do need a system to manage it all.
I think the author is mistaking Content Management Systems with something else. Content Management is about content management. I don't quite get his point.<p><i>I’m concerned that enabling a writer/journalist/marketing executive to control every aspect of their website</i>
Well, IMO you can't refer to "controlling every aspect" by "content management". If you don't want people to modify the design, use a CMS.<p><i>The only part of the Google Ventures homepage that needs to be content managed is the Here’s what we’ve been up to section.</i>
Exactly ! Content Management is for people to manage content.
Here's something I realised a little while ago:<p>The web <i>is</i> my content management system.<p>I post to Flickr, Dribbble, Blogger, Github, Google+, Twitter etc and that stuff is my content. I post it there so that other people will find it and interact with it.<p>After that realisation, I figured why fight it and decided that the strategy for my personal site was to collect all my content from those other places.
Hah, try working at an agency, Building that landing page and having all the parts editable by non-techy users is absolutely required & no real challenge, It just takes a "homepage content item" type system with specific fields for things like "hero image copy" or "content area 1 image/copy/icon"