DBS Interactive Blog

“Why should my company’s website utilize a CMS?”

You may have found yourself pondering this question at some point at your current organization. To address this question intelligently, we need to first lay down the basic foundation, starting with a definition. What is a CMS? CMS stands for Content Management System. According to Wikipedia, a Content Management System (CMS) is a collection of procedures used to manage work flow in a collaborative environment. Honestly, Wikipedia’s definition doesn’t do much for me, as it doesn’t provide any more information than what the actual word implies. A better definition would describe a CMS as a computer system used by a Content Manager to manage the creation, modification, and organization of content from a website without the need or expertise of a webmaster.

So what are the benefits of using a CMS to manage your website? It turns out there are many!

• Intuitive UI – The obvious benefit to content management systems is that it allows individuals, who may have little to no experience with HTML or code, to efficiently manage the content of a website. Content managers can effortlessly change an image, replace text, and even add a new page with just the click of a button. Although we would prefer to manage the content on your site, given our expertise in online marketing and search engine optimization, content management systems allow us to hand back control of the website to you with complete confidence that the website will succeed.

• Customization – No two businesses have the same needs and luckily, CMS’s are easily tailored to an organization’s requirements through the use of various plugins and add-ons. Plugins are available for a large variety of tasks, but some popular categories include search engine optimization, E-commerce, caching, and web forms.

• Wide Community Support – At some point in time, your website is bound to encounter some problems. When something does go wrong, content management systems offer great community support. Millions of individuals around the world use CMS’s to manage their websites and it is very likely that someone else has run into the same problem.

• Restrictive Access – Let’s face it, while CMS’s make editing content very easy, there are still some people you may not trust with that responsibility. CMS’s allow the content manager to assign varying levels of privileges to members in his/her organization. While some may have full privileges, you could potentially allow individuals only certain abilities like editing a specific page.

• Decentralized Maintenance – Content managers can edit the site through any browser, on any computer, with an Internet connection; therefore you are not tied to your server. Having this capability is a great feature, but is often overlooked. Another byproduct of decentralized maintenance is increased security. Since the website is edited through a CMS, the server is never directly accessed.

There are essentially two trains of thought when implementing a CMS into your website. Developers can choose to build upon existing content management platforms, adapting the product to fulfill the needs of the client, or they can choose to develop a custom solution, where a CMS is built from scratch. Most don’t choose the custom development route but instead choose to develop the system by customizing one of the 3 popular content management platforms: Wordpress, Drupal, and Joomla. Each CMS has its own strengths and weaknesses, but for now, we’ll stick with just introducing each system to you.

• Wordpress – Although most identify Wordpress with blogging, Wordpress is in fact a very powerful content management platform. It behaves and looks very similar to the Wordpress blog UI, but adds oodles of new functionality. Content managers are able to easily extend the functionality of the CMS by integrating open-source plugins made available by the Wordpress community.

• Drupal – Drupal is a free software package that allows a content manager to easily publish, manage, and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Drupal has great built-in functionality, and when combined with the many free add-ons available through the Drupal community, content managers’ are enabled with endless possibilities for customization.

• Joomla – As with the other two, Joomla is an open source solution which enables content managers to build websites and powerful online applications. Joomla is highly customizable and thousands of add-ons are available in the Joomla Extensions Directory.

I hope this has helped clear any confusion as to what a content management system is and shows the importance of utilizing a CMS for your company’s website. Next week, we’ll dive further into the topic and explore the individual strengths and weaknesses of Wordpress, Drupal, and Joomla.