Web Content Management Systems - CMS

If your website needs regular updates that you would prefer to manage in-house, a content management system may be right for you.

What is a Content Management System (CMS)?

A CMS is a system that allows you or users in your organization to easily publish, manage, and organize the content on your website.

Using a simple web-based interface, a CMS allows you to manage your website without needing to know HTML code or being able to use a website editing application such as Dreamweaver.

Content management systems work by storing your content (text, images, etc) in a database. When a page on your website is requested, the system accesses the database and renders the webpage.

What are the advantages of using a CMS?

Besides the aforementioned ability to create and manage your website content, there are a number of other benefits to using a content management system.

  • Web-based interface -- write and manage your content from anywhere.
  • Dynamic navigation menus -- menu items are updated whenever you create, move, or delete content.
  • Support for multiple authors with varying access levels and permissions.
  • Content tracking and accountability -- when content is created or changed, you'll know which user is responsible and when it was changed.
  • Content scheduling -- post content to the site today, and schedule it so that it doesn't show up until next week.
  • Design changes are easy to apply to all pages of the site using templates.
  • Built-in site search functions -- because all of the content is stored in a database, visitors can more easily find content.
  • Extensible functionality -- need a forum, user polls, guest book, banners, photo gallery, RSS feeds, or more? Third-party modules and plug-ins allow you to add extra functionality without the cost of custom programming work.
  • Multiple language support -- have different versions of your website for different languages.

What are the disadvantages of using a CMS?

Content management systems have quite a few benefits for different types of businesses, but there are some drawbacks as well.

  • Installation, set up, and initial design and development are more complex -- up front development costs are higher.
  • More difficult to back up and transfer content -- because all of the content is stored in a database, web server backups become more complex.
  • Moving to a different server or changing over to static HTML pages is difficult.
  • Enterprise level CMS systems are expensive -- tens of thousands of dollars just to purchase the license, not including development and customization.
  • Higher server requirements -- depending on the CMS used, you may require a more powerful web server for hosting, resulting in increased hosting costs.
  • Core systems, components, and third-party modules need regular updating -- often, bug fixes and security patches are released and require system upgrades.
  • CMS pages can be difficult to optimize for search engines -- most content management systems are not built with search engine optimization (SEO) in mind.

Should your next website use a CMS?

This is a pretty simple question to answer, but requires answers to more questions:

  1. Will your website require regular content updates (daily, weekly)?
  2. Will you have multiple users creating and managing content?
  3. Will your website have a lot of content pages (more than 100)?
  4. Do you have a higher inital budget allocated to website development?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, a website built on a content management system may be right for you.

If you have any questions on whether a CMS would be right for your project, contact us for a free consultation.