[deanotron]

Static CMS's are great for personal projects, or very tech-friendly clients, but most clients paying for a website want the ability to manage content in a user friendly way.

I'm sure the vast majority of WP sites have been built for a paying client.

[pgeorgi]

The backend could be dynamic, creating static html for the frontend. Which is essentially, what the numerous caching plugins are doing, just in a very convoluted way.

[nodata]

and what movabletype does.

[bikamonki]

I've done a ton of WP sites, maybe two clients update themselves. Besides, who says a no-backend CMS cannot be as friendly to use?

[deanotron]

This is true about infrequent updates - it may be more for providing the appearance of total control.

I would love to see a user-friendly universal app for managing static sites (Jeckyl, Docpad) that is something someone of my Mom's tech capability could use. (and let's be honest, WP itself is sometimes "way too much")

[bikamonki]

More than ultra-friendly I think what the static site CMS ecosystem is missing are tons of beautiful themes. Let's be clear about it: the client only sees and complains about the looks. Once we have enough themes out there it will take off. Lately I am playing with a homemade hack to use any html template on a static site generator....let's see how that turns out.

[MollyR]

I'm running into this with a client.

They want a friendly easy way to manage a complex case management system, but they don't understand how some of interconnected relationships work between the data they want. So trying to cross that chasm, of explaining what they actually want implies for the data has been miserable. Somethings just aren't simple :(

[bikamonki]

Maybe this will help: always charge a monthly SLA b/c systems are not like a haircut that you sell and forget about it, systems are alive monsters. When clients complain about the SLA use this story: You: Do you own a car a pay insurance? Client: Yes (most likely answer) You: Do you use the insurance? Client: No (if client answers yes they are conceding the point in advance!) You: But you pay for it regardless just in case you need it. Same deal with SLA contracts. Cars break, systems break.

[muuck]

that's true clients think they want a CMS system, the reality is however the one who does the updating is usually you.