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I’ve Never Met a Boxed CMS I Like: SitePoint has a brutally accurate post about CMSs and making them run actual Web sites.

The first issue is that the very nature of a CMS is not easily boxable, without creating an application that tries to do everything for everyone and fails at doing most things particularly well. The tasks required for content management are generic, but every organization has a far different focus when it comes to how that content should be managed and how it thinks about that content.

This is all so true. I’ve often thought that the “best” CMS in the world would actually just be a really well-executed API that solved the “major” CM problems, since everything in a CMS is so custom anyway. We’ve had good luck with eZ publish, but there are times when your information architecture and grand plans get plowed under by the limitations of any CMS." (Gadgetopia)

 

The only way to solve a CMS problem is create a programmable Content Engine. Other than that, it is very hard to create a CMS that can fulfill a specific website needs.

Programmers tend to scoff at the idea of building a website. It's a solve problem, they thought. Except that there are about 1000 different CMS out there trying to figure this problem out.

It's not yet a solved problem.

Why ? Because a website is very designer driven. When the designer comes with new and innovative, suddenly the CMS is having trouble to accomodate those innovative web features - because the CMS was designed to accomodate the old designs.

So the best you can do is provide

Content API + URL Mapping + Faceplate for Input +  Templating Engine + Scriptability.

Without this, congratulation, you become the 1001th  CMS out there.