Over the last few months, when we have had discussions with potential clients, most of them have been very interested in wanting to be able to update their own website. They often are sick of waiting for days or even weeks on their former “web guy” to make updates to their website that sometimes only takes 5 minutes. Others make changes so frequently they’d just rather do it themselves than pay someone the hourly fees. While Content Management Systems can be a fairly expensive upfront cost, often times they are much cheaper over the long run. So here are some things to think about when considering investing in a content management system:
What is a Website Content Management System?
A Content Management System (CMS) is a web-based program or application that allows you to create, edit and manage your website content. A web designer can create a custom design for you and then integrate it as a “theme” or “template” for the CMS being used. Most of the data or content for your website is stored in a database instead of flat files (multiple HTML files linked together). A CMS website is sometimes called a “dynamic website” because the data is being stored in a database and not using flat files.
With a CMS, a user with very limited knowledge of HTML could upload and store documents, create photo galleries, and publish web pages or blog entries. Obviously, with every application there is a little learning curve, but the idea is to make it easier for the average user to maintain a website. A CMS allows for more advanced functionality than a flat file website. Some typical features include a news/blogging tool, contact forms, simple file/image uploading, user roles or permissions, photo galleries, etc.
This is what the backend of the Wordpress Content Management System that powers this website looks like
How a Website Content Management System can help
With a Content Management System, you as a client can make updates to your own website without the need to call a “web guy”. Usually we get clients who ask for a CMS because they have finally become tired of their web guy taking way too long to make simple text changes to their website. Another positive is that the cost to maintain your website goes down since you are doing the regular content maintenance. Instead of paying a web guy an hourly fee for updates, you make the updates yourself and they get published immediately. With the right CMS and the proper training from your web developer, your CMS should be very simple to use and make updates.
Which Website Content Management System is best?
Each website has unique requirements so not every CMS is right for every project. You first need to analyze your needs and what is most important for your website. With those requirements, a web developer should be able to select the proper solution for you. In our experience, we have found the open source community to be a great fit for most of our clients. When certain website requirements are very specific to a client’s needs, we will implement a custom solution. However, we have found that WordPress seems to be the one solution we come back to time and time again. In fact, we feel so strongly about Wordpress that it powers this blog!
So do you need a Website Content Management System?
Here is what we always ask our prospective clients when they ask us about a CMS:
- Are you planning on making updates multiple times in a month?
- Do you ever have time sensitive updates that require immediate publishing?
- Are you comfortable paying more upfront but saving money on hourly updates over time?
If you answer “yes” to any of these questions, than a CMS might be a great fit for you. If you only have a small, brochure type website with content that changes on a very infrequent basis then the additional cost to setup a CMS may not really be warranted.