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Content Management Systems; why you need to know

• 29/10/10
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Choosing the right Web based Content Management Systems (CMS) for your website.

Choosing the Right CMS Why Does it Matter? from Jonathan Denwood on Vimeo.

Jonathan and Kirk talk about CMS (contact management systems). Listen as Jonathan explains the importance of CMS and how it can save you money and time.

As a business owner looking to have a website developed it is important to know what it is you are looking for. You are not a web designer and are not expected to fully understand every aspect of web designing, but just as you should have some basic understanding of your financial situation before choosing a CPA, knowing the basics of CMS will help you choose the right web developer. But first, let’s take a look at what we mean by CMS.

A web content management (WCM) system is a CMS designed to simplify the publication of web content to web sites and mobile devices—in particular, allowing content creators to submit content without requiring technical knowledge of HTML coding. The ease of adding and updating your website will save you the business owner money two ways. First, as a business owner you may decide to update your site in house. Since web based content management systems do not require HTML coding it will just take some training on how to update and add. You will save on having a web developer do the updating for you. Second, if you choose to have your web developer do all of the updating you will save money as it takes less time and effort on his part. There is no lengthy HTML coding that would normally take hours to do.

It used to be acceptable to have a website developed and never updated. This is called a static website. Static websites are no longer profitable because today’s search engines are constantly looking for updated material. Google Bing and other popular search engines use algorithms that seek out updated information. The updated material is what pops up first on search engines. The static website becomes outdated and is pushed down the chain of searches. This means you may have a great looking site with quality products but if your website is static or is based with a bad CMS it may end up on page four of Google’s list of sites! New clients could not possibly find you on page four. A good content management system based website that is updated on a regular schedule will always be on page one of site lists. Picking the wrong CMS will lead to a poor return on your investment.

So how do you pick the right CMS? This depends on what type of website you want and your business goals and who you want to update your site.

If you are looking to do infrequent updating yourself it is best to look at what is called Light CMS. Here are a couple of links to light CMS that I personally have used on client’s websites:

Light CMS

Perch http://grabaperch.com

MojoMotor http://mojomotor.com

Both are useful at allowing for simple edits of existing content and are great for that static website which needs a system that gives more control to its owner. These systems are easy to implement and are inexpensive to set up and manage.

The next step-up in the CMS food chain

For the company that wants to update on a weekly basis these systems are best. If you are looking to consistently change video and other multimedia these systems would work well for you. The ease of use allows for web owners who want to manage their content in house the ability to do so.

Wordpress.org http://wordpress.org

Wordpress is an enormously popular system with thousands of active designers/developers. It is very flexible and has a great track record. I have used it on a number of projects and is my personal choice for many of my client. However it does have some limitations and problems:

If you have a number of individuals who will be adding content to the site this can be a problem. I’m sure I will get some angry developers sending me emails saying that I’m talking rubbish! However, in my experience it does have some problems with this area when you have a number of contributors to the website with different permission rights. The easy solution is to limit the contributors to a small number of people.

Wordpress is and open-source. This basically means anybody can see the core code. However, this is good and a bad thing the same breath. It does mean if any security problems are found a fix is very quickly by the Wordpress community. Unfortunately this also means that the core code is out there and anybody can study it and find security flaws and exploit them.

What does this mean to you the owner of the website? Well it means you may get regular bills from the developer connected to updating the core of the CMS. Wordpress has a number of really cool plugins which can cheaply extend the basic functionality of its use. However these plugins will also need updating on a regular basis.

Like I said at the beginning of this section I use Wordpress, and for the right type of client it is an excellent choice. However, for large, high volume websites that will have multiple contributors and needs strong security measures, this will not be the right solution.

The Top of the Food Chain

So you have one of these large high volume, multi contributors. or small government websites. What are your choices?

Well to my mind there are three main players in this game.

Joomla http://www.joomla.org

Drupal http://drupal.org/

Expression Engine http://expressionengine.com

I have used Joomla and I just don’t like it. You have the all problems connected to security but none of the benefits of flexibility and a good community support that you would get with Wordpress. It’s also overly complicated and hard to deal with unless you are a real hard-core php developer. This is not one you would use to do in house updating.

Drupal I never really used so I can’t make any real detailed comments. However it looks as complicated as Jooma.It seems to have a much better community support system then Joomla and the community seems to be growing.

Expression Engine is one of my favorite CMS systems. It is very powerfuland flexible. Like Joomla and Drupal it can be very complicated to setup. However I’ve personally found Expression Engine to be easier to develop websites than with Joomla. It’s a paid for CMS, however the license fees are not that expensive for a commercial website. The cost is $299.99.

With Expression Engine (EE) you get the best of both worlds. You get the commitment of a real company that is constantly updating the system. You don’t seem to get a lot of security updates with EE as it is very stable and has a number of free or paid for plugins which can really extend the system.

Summery

I just wanted to give a quick outline of what’s available connected to moving your website into a CMS or if you looking at a new website what choices are available to you. There are a number of choices connected to CMS. I have outlined some of the leading products in this field.

I know that it sounds complicated and a part of you might be thinking why do I need to know this stuff? However, as pointed out at the beginning of this article as a business owner you do need to know something about your accounting systems and how to use them effectively so they can help you keep control of your business in financial terms. Well it the same with your business website. You don’t need to become an expert but you do need to understand the technology and how it will affect your business. After all, the goal is to have a real return on your investment and have a website that works for you. I guarantee that once you have moved your website into a CMS or have a brand new site

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