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Content Management System (CMS)
A CMS helps you create, publish and manage content for your website. Any and every website project now will be built on a content management system. The days of having a website consisting of a few pages created in say in Frontpage on a server are a legacy that some people are still moving forward from.
Choose a CMS based system to manage your website content and choose wisely as it will be a defining choice that you will live with for many years.
A CMS provides various functions, but primarily:
- content editor - equivalent to a word processor
- manage the templates or page layouts - as the content should be separate from the page layout
- publish to 'live' - to move pages from the edit environment to the live website
- display the live website - so when a visitor wants to see a page this is how they get it
CMS systems provide different functionality, different support and come at different prices; from free through to tens of thousands of pounds or dollars.
One big difference is whether it is an 'Open Source' system or a 'proprietary' system. There are pros and cons to each route, which there isn't space to go into here.
Another difference is how much additional function is included, or can be easily integrated, to help you present an engaging and effective marketing and sales experience to your prospect or customer.
For example, to what extent does the CMS provide or integrate with Social Media, Email marketing and Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems in particular.
CMS Entry level
A simple website can be created using free or very low-cost software. It is possible for a website project to be undertaken by an entrepreneur, marketing or sales person themselves.
Selecting a CMS that is hosted, selecting a template design and understanding (or resolving) sufficient of the technical aspects to avoid the traps is possible.
This website, for example, I have developed using the RVsitebuilder tools provided by Midphase Hosting as part of their service. Joombla and Drupal are a couple of free, open source content management systems available. However, having attempted this site in one of them as a pilot project I discovered that there was an enormous learning curve required to use them and therefore I put them in the Intermediate level group.
Starting out with a Blog platform like Wordpress would certainly be a route worth exploring. Wordpress particularly has a thriving community of developers and many off-the-shelf design schemes that use the power of the Wordpress CMS and present it in a way that looks like a website rather than a blog.
Examples of entry level CMS systems:
CMS intermediate level
The likelihood is that beyond the entry level you will select and commission a web design and build agency or technical professional to create your website for you. If they are independent or know several CMS systems they can advise you about the most appropriate. If they only know one system then take this into account when making your selection.
What you should ensure is that you have the ability to create new pages and edit content yourself. You don't want to have to get the developer to make content changes as this will add ongoing cost to the project and slow down the growth of the website and your business.
One of the technical step-changes that I would say indicates an intermediate level system is the ability to have dynamic content on the web page. There are many systems now, even at entry level, that allow you to add a 'widget' to a page, basically an instruction to include information from another source, like a News or Twitter feed.
The ability to define an algorythm of instructions as the page is being presented, such as 'if the visitor comes from this geography, this previous page' etc. then present 'this set of content'. If this 'personalisation' of a web page would help your marketing then check out if this can be achieved by the CMS you are considering.
Examples of intermediate level CMS systems:
CMS advanced level
One of the major step changes between entry level and advanced CMS systems is moving from a simple edit and publish process to a team publishing approach. Two aspects apply here.
Firstly, permissions that apply to different pages and sections of the website. So marketing people may be able to update any pages, but HR and Engineering may be restricted to their respective sections.
Secondly, publishing workflow where a page gets approved by different people before being published to live. Workflow sequences can be defined based on roles and permissions so that say a junior can create a page and content in it, but it must then be approved by their line manager and say finance and legal before it goes to the live site. This approval becomes an audit trail.
Other aspects at the advanced level is where some CMS systems can allow you to recreate the page that a visitor would have seen on a particular day. This is essential for regulated industries such as financial services, which is why they can cost so much.
Examples of advanced level CMS systems:
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