Over Complicating A Simple Need


I recently created a new web site. It's a small, simple site, what really amounts to just a few static pages. It doesn't have a database, a search function, forms, etc. It could quite easily be a straight HTML, JS, and CSS site (when was the last time I did one of those??).

Yet when I built it, I built it in ColdFusion. Not necessarily a bad thing, as it gives me a bit of flexibility for some minor dynamic elements, like having standard headers/footers, etc. Yet I also built it using the Mach-II framework. This site is literally 9 pages of non-dynamic content, yet I went through the effort to do it in Mach-II, complete with config, events, etc.

Even as I was building it, I was asking myself why. Why not just "plain" ColdFusion? Why add to the overhead and load time just to have it in Mach-II? I tried to convince myself it was for future expansibility and the "convenience" of using a template. In reality, you don't need Mach-II to use a central template and this site is unlikely to ever have a DB back end or other complicated content. The only potential dynamic components would be a blog or the like, and that would all be self-contained. It will never actually have listeners, a model, or any of the like.

So why?

To be honest, I'm not really sure myself. Maybe just for practice and "keeping up the skills". Maybe I was just tired and not thinking straight. Or maybe I'm just so used to building web applications that I'd lost sight of the simplicity of building a straight website. I may never really figure it out myself, but I am working to undo it all, rip out the Mach-II and redoing it in a more simplistic form. As for all the "lost" work…we'll just calling it a good reminder that sometimes KISS is best. 😉