Does a flat file CMS use less RAM memory & CPU power than Wordpress?

[built]

Question:

If you use a flat file system, when traffic starts peaking will it use less memory and less CPU than Wordpress?

So basically, are flat file systems lighter on resources?

 

[CCarter]

Question:

If you use a flat file system, when traffic starts peaking will it use less memory and less CPU than Wordpress?

In theory it should be, but it will depend on which flat-files CMS. Flat file CMSes are geared towards no database to query but they can be coded to do loops to create their environment - slowing down performance; more than Wordpress? I dunno. PicoCMS loops through every single page on every load to create the navigation for example. If you do not use the cached plugin you are screwed on processsing since it reads every single page in the content folder upon every request. If you have hundred or thousands of pages performance will be degraded without the caching plugin.

You have to know the weaknesses and strength of every system you use. That's not to say it's a bad scenario since Wordpress or another system's may have other bad functions that are similar. The only way to truly know is to do benchmark test on the CPU load at peak time when using Wordpress versus your CMS.

So basically, are flat file systems lighter on resources?

Potentially - but bad coding can happen always on the CMS developer side or a plugin developer side killing performance. Even if you started and benchmarked the barebones versions of Wordpress versus PicoCMS for example, it doesn't mean one will be lighter/faster if you introduce a plugin that is coded badly in the final production versions.

 

[darkzerothree]

We also have to differentiate between "flat file CMS" and static site generators.

A flat file CMS is not much different from WordPress - it queries files instead of a database, which might or might not make for better performance.

A static site generator generates HTML pages.
This is better on load and performance.