use Perl

With content management systems (CMSs), there are basically two paradigms that I call "client-side" and "server-side" (not entirely accurate, but bear with me). The vast majority are server-side. The code constantly runs, keeping everything going where it should be. This is great because it's conceptually simple and easy to integrate with existing code/databases.

The downsides are legion.

Another dependency

If your Web server goes down, your hosed either way. If your CMS goes down, the client-side CMS doesn't break your Web site (though there are server-side CMS systems which can build static pages).

Support

What? Your ISP doesn't support the language your CMS uses? Too bad. Or maybe they quite reasonably don't trust that dodgy PHP thingy you found on Joe Hacker's Web site.

Security holes

Speaking of PHP, if you have a security hole on your server-side CMS (I'm sure you can name a few), you probably need to take down your site while you patch it -- and I'm sure that plenty of us have worked for businesses which will neither let you take down the site nor patch the CMS.

Scalability

Anyone here ever run into scability issues with their server-side CMS because it has to constantly serve the pages? Yeah, I thought so.

URL Control

Many server-side CMS systems give you no control over your URLs. Why on earth would a professional organization tolerate that? URLs are important.

For client-side CMS systems like Bricolage and Krang[1], you have a server -- could be running on your laptop if you want -- which runs your CMS app. When you're done editing your pages, you publish them to your site. They are sent via sftp, ftp, or whatever other transport mechanism is set up. In other words, you work locally, publish remotely. The downside is that it can be tricky to integrate with existing sites or databases, but once that's done, you generally don't have the disadvantages above. In fact, you could make your entire site static and have virtually no performance overhead aside from what your Web server can handle.

Now that you've read this far, what client-side CMS systems would you recommend for individuals? The easier to use, the better. Bricolage and Krang are great, but they're designed for people with serious needs.

1. Krang borrowed so much from Bricolage that many would be hard-pressed to see the difference between a Krang screenshot and a Bricolage screenshot. I never did understand why they wrote their own rather than work with Bricolage, but they did put together a great product.