In days of old, to maintain a web site a marketer or business owner would have had to provide content in a document like Word to a developer. The developer would have had to create a page from scratch or use HTML templates with programs such as Notepad or DreamWeaver. And a designer would be employed if a new design had to be thought of. Then the page would have to be posted onto the web server to be seen by the world. This is fine for small sites with very infrequent updates. But you can imagine how intense this can get if you’re managing 2 or more site updates a week and your site has hundreds of pages of content.
For most projects I’ve built in my career there has been a content management system (CMS) of some kind. And in each case the amount of effort to install and customize can be considerable. It is important for a business owner or web site manager to be aware of costs and development issues when choosing a CMS application to manage your site.
The benefits of a CMS are pretty clear. Content management systems automate the creation of content onto your site. Content includes copy, images, video, Flash and external content feeds. Once you upload and publish a piece of content it automatically creates pages and links to the new page. With a good CMS you can divide up the tasks to maintain your site. Instead of a web master doing everything, you can delegate content publishing, technical support and design to individuals or separate teams. These teams can work as independently or collaboratively as required. Some CMS applications have robust publishing workflows which adds greater editorial control over content, the site’s information architecture and optimization for search engines. Another key benefit CMS applications have is in the separation of content and presentation. This allows for web masters to conduct design enhancements or full redesign projects without losing your content. Content can also be extended or shared across other sites without design.
Deciding If You Need A CMS
Are you about to redesign your web site? Moving to a CMS may save you considerable time and money. Ask yourself the following questions. If you can answer yes to any of them you may need to consider integrating a CMS into your digital mix.
- Do you need to publish articles on an regular basis? Hourly? Daily? Weekly? More than once a month?
- Does making updates to your site depend on one person?
- Is there a prioritization of which content gets published first causing delays for other content updates?
- Are you publishing a variety of types of content like video, images, Flash etc?
- Can small site updates or changes take days or weeks to complete?
- Does making global design changes require significant time to plan and execute?
- Do you find that over time your site has become difficult to manage and content is becoming harder to find?
- Is your site multilingual?
- Has your site become so big that you must consider a redesign?
Again yes to any or all of the above maybe an indicator that it is time for a content management system for your business.
Different Flavas Of CMS
Of course choosing a CMS for your business or organization can’t be as easy as pie. But just like pie there are a variety of flavours of CMS applications that suite just as many environments. I’ve highlighted 3 here.
Server-Installed: There are numerous CMS applications that can be installed onto any server environment. Industrial-strength applications for large enterprises could include Interwoven, Vignette or Microsoft’s content management server. As you can imagine these applications can come with considerable license fees, additional hardware, customization and support costs. If budget is a concern, there are open-source solutions that usually don’t come with the additional license fees. The saying, “you get what you pay for”, applies here. Free open-source solutions is a great approach for small businesses with limited budgets. Some applications have full CMS capabilities such as Joomla! or Drupal. Some software give up certain business processes and capabilities in exchange for ease of use like WordPress. The upside to having an open source CMS is the vast offerings of CMS plugins, templates and extensions created by CMS experts that are very easy to implement by novice web masters. There are also very few limitations when it comes to design and customization for your web site. A disadvantage of these free tools is getting the right advice and technical support can be difficult if you’re managing the site yourself with limited technical skills.
Internet-Based: Or web-based services offer content management capabilities on shared software platforms. In this scenario the CMS application is hosting and fully supported by another vendor or hosting provider. This is a great option if you don’t wish to take on the software maintenance yourself. What you get is a complete application ready to accept your design and customization and content updates. Many have publishing workflow capabilities and can connect with other external web sites easily. Licenses for these solutions are typically subscription based paid monthly or annually.
Home-Grown: This is by far the most expensive approach to integrating a CMS application into your web site. Having a CMS application built to your own individual specifications may seem like a great idea if you. However you can lose out on some of the rich features other pre-built systems have. You also limit on your ability to grow and scale your web site as new technologies develop. And your greatly restrict the kind of technical support you need if something was to go wrong. If not done with the right planning and design your home-grown solution may become even more difficult to manage as new features, content and applications are added in a Frankensteinian approach.
Stay Tuned: Next I’ll get more into open-source content management systems.
