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CMS - Web Content Management System

Why every website, even small website needs a content management system?
You are about to get a website built for your growing business. Having found a good web design company, you are looking forward to seeing the results of their creative efforts.

With our hosting plan and a CMS, there is no restriction as to the number of pages and subpages. 

Once the website is setup, and the customers start rolling in, you will want to make ongoing changes. These could be very small, such as changing a phone number, or adding a news item. New products, or shifts in business direction, will necessitate larger updates to the site. Chances are, though, you will still love the design, and it’s just the text that needs to be changed. While the web designer did a great job, you don’t want to have to go back to them for every change.

A hundred small changes in a year will leave you both frustrated, and is not economic for either party.

This is where a content management system (CMS) comes in. Sitting behind the scenes, it gives you the ability to maintain your own site. No website larger than a few pages should be without a CMS to manage it. The people who maintain the content don't need to know anything about HTML, or about how the pages are organized and laid out.

The heavy task of coding content into HTML templates is eliminated, once the designer is done with the initial design, integration and set up . Adding user interactivity is much easier. Today's Web users expect a high degree of interactivity. A dynamic system allows you to offer interactive features smoothly and efficiently, and to incorporate personalization features that wouldn't be possible with a flat site.

When a site gets to a certain size, it simply doesn't make sense to stay flat, because maintenance becomes a nightmare.  

You have a website, It has grown over time, and while it is very useful, it is far from perfect. Much of the content is out-of-date or inaccurate, it's hard to find the information, updating the site is complex, and the appearance is becoming dated.

Worse yet, you've lost track of all the pages on the site, and by having all the changes made by your skilled webmaster, the updates are piling up in their in-tray. What was on the site last week, or last year? You couldn't say. In the back of your mind, you know that this could leave you in a difficult position if a customer sues, but there is little that you can do. If this sounds grim, you are not alone. In fact, it's the natural by-product of maintaining a site using manual tools such as Dreamweaver or Frontpage.

Thankfully, these problems are what a content management system is specifically designed to solve. At the front end of a content management system is an easy-to-use authoring environment, designed to work like Word. This provides a non-technical way of creating new pages or updating content, without having to know any HTML. Of course, every site looks different, so the CMS lets the graphic designers and web developers specify the appearance that is applied by the system. These publishing capabilities ensure that the pages are consistent across the entire site, and enable a very high standard of appearance.

The CMS can be used to make your site dynamic and interactive, thereby enhancing the site's impact.

What is a CMS?
A content management system is a package specifically designed to be managed entirely by yourself or your staff without any programming knowledge.

First of all, it provides you with a simple, non-technical way of updating your content. This is typically done via a web-based interface that works much like Word does. Just point-and-click, type in the new text, and click save. Your site is instantly updated. Equally easy is adding new pages, deleting old ones, or restructuring the site to match your new business model.

The CMS also automates tasks, such as applying the same page layout and appearance across the site. Menus and other navigation are also automatically produced. Along with the many other administrative tools, this leaves you to concentrate on the words, and not on the technology.

What are the benefits?  
A content management system makes life much easier in many ways: You are no longer dependent on the web designers making changes for you. Changes can be made any time they are needed, day or night. This is increasingly important as your business comes to rely on the website as a communications channel. All the technical details are simply handled by the CMS, allowing anyone to manage and update the site. The CMS ensures that all the pages are consistent in design, and will build all the menus and other navigation for you.

The many other powerful features of the CMS allows the site to grow along with your business.

And last but not the least: every new info or update is stored in the database!
And the cost? The good news is that a lightweight CMS, suitable for a modest-sized website, is not expensive. It can be as low as a few thousand dollars. Of course, if your site is larger, or has complex requirements, the cost of a matching CMS will also grow. After all, you get what you pay for.

Next steps :  Talk with us about what we can provide in terms of a content management system. Tell us what you need. Request a FREE quote. We will set up an appointment in our office or at your location .

I would like to add to the "trends" I've noticed myself. More and more clients are requesting that they would like to update part of their site themselves. So Web Content Management could be said to be an increasing trend. Also, the way in which content is offered. Print friendly versions, RSS feeds, etc. All the above are aimed at accommodating visitors needs, whilst increasing site functionality and should be considered in any design brief.

See also: *** Why would you need a database...? ***   Click here to find out!