Thanks for the explanation. Totally agree with "Never build a CMS" rule. But why not use a pre-built CMS in the first place? Either use Wordpress, or a CMS plugin for your framework if you're using something like ROR. If you're not using a CMS, how are you updating the copy on pages like About? Does that process require a developer each time?

The Etsy blogs use Wordpress, so we do use existing third-party tools where is makes sense.

Kellan might have a rule to not build a CMS but we certainly have built one to manage help page content and other knowledge base pages. That content is largely managed by our support staff.

I wrote the current tool but it is actively being replaced. We chose to to roll our own since we'd have to do some work to integrate a third party tool into our database architecture and authentication system. The tool is heavily integrated into other internal tooling and has specific workflows that also make using an existing tool challenging.

The About page content is largely static, aside from the staff photos mentioned in the above post.

can you explain this? i've always thought a CMS is a good thing to allow non-engineers to work with and edit non-critical data like this.

I think the point is "use existing technology" vs. "roll your own."