There are 3 common kinds of systems website owners use to manage the content on their sites. Some are more powerful and more flexible, but also require more effort to setup and maintain. Which system is right for you depends on what kind of web site you need.

1. Manually upload HTML files. This is the simplest, and the most limited way to manage your website content.
2. Use blog software. This lets you publish large amounts of up-to-date content, and it provides some powerful ways to organize your content and market your website to users.
3. Use a content-management system. With a CMS, your website can blow you away. Add in some custom programming, and you can do almost anything you can imagine.

There is a disadvantage to all this power, however. It’s like the difference between riding a bicycle, driving a car, and flying an airplane. A plane will get you a lot farther, a lot faster, but there’s a lot more that can go wrong. If you want cheap and reliable, and if a bike will get you where you want to go, then that’s the way to go. There’s also some overlap between the three. If I needed to get from New York to Tampa Bay, I could fly or I could drive. Flying will get me there much faster, but it’ll be more expensive, and you’ll have to deal with the TSA to boot. Which means of transportation you choose depends on the particular trip you want to take.

It’s the same way with these three ways of managing your web content. Each level overlaps into the others:

• Some businesses have extensive on-line article archives, which they publish using hand-coded HTML. Usually, you’d use a CMS to manage a collection of documents this large.
• I’ve even seen people provide Web 2.0 features like RSS feeds using hand-coded RSS! I’m just glad I don’t have to do that.
• And some users use their blog software as a CMS. They install plug-ins up the wazoo, even tweak the software with custom programming.
• Still others install a CMS just to put up a simple, 5-page website. They could have used manual HTML. But they chose the automated software, because they want the flexibility to rearrange it, extend it, or change the look and feel of it easily.

So there are no hard and fast rules. You have to use your own judgement to determine where you want to go and how fast you want to get there.