Hard Coding Components on a Client Specific Websites

The question you should ask before deciding if specific content/code belongs in the template file or the content editor is “Will the client want easy access to update this content?” or perhaps “Is this information EVER going to change?”.

Personally, I prefer to keep the M in CMS and strive to always have easily managed content. Often, this means extra steps creating custom metaboxes to expose individual sections of structured content to the page editor. Elliot Condon’s ACF plugin can help you see what’s possible in that respect though this functionality is possible w/o the plugin. These extra steps usually require a few extra hours of coding and testing. It always produces a happy client, however.

Think about the first time you were tasked with editing a simple bit of text on a WordPress site and when you opened that page to edit it, the content editor was empty. How familiar is your client with HTML and PHP? Do you think they should be required to hunt down a page template, scan the code for the piece to edit the content, etc?

Cost and client expectations must also be considered. Did you bid the job nice and low so you could get the work or did you communicate the value you would deliver with an easily maintained site, justifying your much higher project cost?