Ed Meehan, a CloudCannon Partner, has been a solo freelance developer for the past ten years. He works with a range of web and design agencies, and undertakes contract development work with small, medium, and large companies, including Sun Bum and Intuit. From building sites to migrations, he’s done it all, and is particularly sensitive to finding technical solutions for clients with specific needs.

It’s a common problem for a business to face: you have a beautiful static website, but no way to easily edit it without diving into the code. This is exactly the issue that developer Ed Meehan encountered with a new client. His solution was to bring their existing site to CloudCannon and configure the site to build with Eleventy, unblocking their team to create and edit new content on their existing site. But why did he choose CloudCannon?

To begin with, Ed believes that most websites should be static content anyway, and felt that the original Jamstack approach — static-first content — was compelling.

Once I learned about Jamstack, I fell in love with it right away. Just out of the box, it solved all the problems that we had to manage. It just made sense to do it this way. It was the same when I picked CloudCannon as a CMS.

Not wanting to deal with WordPress updates or plugins was another factor, and Ed wanted a simple CMS solution for his client. While the client had initially approached him to help update their site, he knew that giving them the tools to create and update content themselves would be a better solution for everyone.

That’s where CloudCannon’s approach to visual editing came in. Ed had been looking for an intuitive way for his clients to work — something simpler than refreshing previews in WordPress — and wanted to make sure his clients could immediately see the changes they were making, while they were editing.

I showed [the client] how to publish and how to build pages, and he pretty much took it from there. So I think it just shows that how intuitive the UI is on CloudCannon — it was pretty straightforward for him.

CloudCannon’s support is another reason Ed loves the platform. His initial questions on configuring CloudCannon were answered quickly, and CloudCannon engineers also helped him integrate imgix into his build flow. This integration means users can upload high-resolution images directly to the CMS, and they’re automatically resized, transformed, and optimized for performance.

I got a lot of really good customer support from CloudCannon. CloudCannon is awesome at following up and I loved it, because I've worked with other CMSs, and you just get a chat window. You don't get a person, so you don't really feel like anyone's going to solve your problem. I was really stoked to see that level of support from CloudCannon.

And what’s next for Ed? Well, he’s a convert to the Git-based CMS approach, where site files and content can be stored in a repository that the user always owns: “I actually think that for these types of projects it's a much better choice. It definitely is more of a deciding factor for future projects, for sure.”

CloudCannon has made such an impact on Ed that he’s even considering switching his own website, edmeehan.dev, over to the CMS.

I can't wait to start a new project. I was thinking about switching my own website over to CloudCannon because I want the Visual Editor. Even for me, I like to visually see what I'm building, even though I wrote the front end. When it comes to building, visual editors are just way more intuitive.

About Ed Meehan

Ed Meehan, a CloudCannon Partner, develops and delivers websites built on the latest web technology, with a focus on modern frameworks and tools. For his clients that means faster page speeds, superior security, and the ability to handle high demand through scalability.