Perhaps because I work in online, or possibly because I read digital media at university and maybe because I blog a fair bit I periodically get asked for advice on how to manage a website. Hence, last night I found myself emailing a friend of G’s about why a Content Management System (or CMS for short) would be a good idea for her site.

And before I knew it I’d written a short essay (or blessay as Mr Fry would refer to it) on CMS and when to use one. Tired of moaning about not having time to produce useful content I thought others might make use of the information within. Here goes:

You know how it is: It seemed like a great idea at the time to start a website – your own personal space to hock your stuff, promote your services, spout off about whatever was on your mind, share your mind-bending expertise on whatever niche interest floats your boat (delete reason as appropriate). Dusting off your self-resolve you either grabbed some poor HTML literate friend or picked up a HTML manual and grabbed some free webspace. Before long you have yourself a website and – if you’re dedicated – an ever-growing list of content, an equally long list of features you’d like to add to the website and you can’t help noticing the paint job needs some work. It all takes time and that’s the one thing you don’t have.

Sound familiar? If so you should seriously consider a Content Management System.

Why use a CMS?

You use a CMS for the following reasons:

1. Loads of content! If you have large amounts of content you will inevitably need some kind of administrative console for the purposes of keeping track of what’s on the site, keeping links up to date and generating site maps (for search engine optimisation) at the bare minimum. A CMS is an absolute must for this type of site whether your content is news, information, blog posts, fiction, whatever…

2. I just want to write! Your site requires updating by users who do not have advanced web skills and/or do not want to have to manually code content. Most good CMS software will have what is called a What-You-See-IS-What-You-Get editor (or WYSIWYG editor) and this can save you a ton of time when writing content up. It also – in good systems – makes a doddle of adding meta keywords to articles as well as enriched content.

3. No money! Relying on the good will of a web development or software development employed friend is OK but it makes it hard to keep your site up to date. This doesn’t just go for content but for other stuff like site structure and design. You can download brilliant, user friendly and most importantly free CMS systems that act as admin consoles for pretty much the entire website. Better yet these systems have legions of developers working on constantly improving the software and through a few simple plugins you can get your site upgraded at the click of a button.

4. I like to redecorate! CMS works by breaking out the content (text and images) from the layout (colour, positioning and style) of the website. If you like to change your site appearance either for a temporary purpose (festival or special day) or just because you get bored easily then CMS makes this a couple of clicks rather than lots of coding. For the main systems there are tons of existing templates you can download for free or at a nominal charge meaning you don’t have to be a designer either.

5. My tags don’t work! A really cool features of current CMS systems has been the provision for web analytics tags (most typically Google Analytics). Hard coding tags into HTML is hard, boring, tedious, prone to error and means you have to remember to put the thing on the page. Any CMS worth its salt will have a facility for putting standard tags on all pages via a user-friendly interface.

As you can probably tell I’m a big proponent of CMS driven websites and I believe a well implemented CMS is one of the biggest cost savings any content rich website can invest in. The good news for individuals and small organisations is that CMS software systems are frequently offered for free; here are some examples:

wordpress
Joomla
wiki
Elxis
Drupal
Modx

The one you use depends on the type of site you want to run and how much effort you want to put into hosting. I use wordpress because it’s one of the best blogging platforms and has a huge amount of plugins that can be used to extend its functionality. It’s also available hosted by them* (useful if you don’t want to have to worry about servers and bandwidth) or as a download to host yourself** (useful if you have an existing URL, want to run advertising or use weird and wonderful plugins).

You’d use a wiki if you want to offer your content in a complex inter-linked kind of way like wikipedia (wiki’s use the same basic structure as wikipedia). Many people discount wiki’s because wikipedia is editable by everyone and they fear their content will be open for everyone to edit, although this platform is well suited to that type of site you don’t have to open it up to be editable to all.

Joomla is a bit more powerful and can be used for more complex sites, typically news sites that carry more complex content than just date-based entries (for which you would use a blog). I’d only recommend this for people who have a good developer to configure it in the first place as it can be quite fiddly.

There are no shortage of CMS systems out there whether you want to spend some cash or take advantage of the free systems. The best approach is to have a clear idea of what you want your site to do and be prepared to shop around for the system that most closely matches your needs. In most cases you should be able to find a demo or example site.

And that’s all you get without parting with some cash. 🙂

* this blog is hosted on wordpress.com
** bookrater.co.uk is run on the self-hosted version of wordpress available at wordpress.org

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