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Why You Need a Content Management System (CMS)

Having a powerful Content Management System (CMS) platform at your disposal is becoming increasingly important.

A robust CMS saves you and your business time, effort, and lots of money. It is often times the single most important investment in your online presence and can be the difference between simple tasks or administration nightmares, even success or failure.

A CMS will make life much easier in many ways

  • You are no longer dependent on the web designers to make minor changes for you.

  • Changes can be made when they are needed, day or night. Which is becoming increasingly important as you come to rely on your website as a main communications or business channel.

  • All the technical details are handled by the CMS, allowing anyone to manage and update the site instantly.

  • Multiple persons can manage the site instead of being restricted to just one person. The CMS will track who is doing what, avoiding potential confusion and security risks.

  • Ensures that each person can only update the section(s) of the site they are responsible for.

  • The CMS ensures that all the pages have a consistent layout & design, it will build all the menus or other navigation for you as you go.

  • There many other powerful features of the CMS, allowing your site to grow with your business.

Why Learn HTML When You Can Have a Powerful Content Manager

No one wants to manage all of their content changes and additions via source code, or hire a developer each time you need to edit your website. Which becomes increasing troublesome as time goes on and volumes of content grow.

The CMS provides a templated environment. So, to add a link to a new web page or press release, you simply enter the link title, URL, and description into different fields and the CMS builds the link for you. For longer text blocks such as a full press release, the content manager is smart enough to do things like add paragraph tags, make links clickable, add other fancy formatting, and prevent SPAM in public environments.

Content Management in Corporations

Within a corporation, the CMS can take many forms:

  • Allow for easier access to content via any Web Browser
  • Allow for faster & easier updates to Web pages
  • Provide access directly to content authors or owners
  • Provide an easy-to-use Web interface, content owners aren't required to know HTML code
  • Create accountability, managers can track logins and changes to various pages within the site
  • Uphold corporate guidelines and standardization rules

Content Management Brings Web-based Access Directly to Content Owners

In many companies, a content owner or group creates the content for webpages, then the Web Developers convert the content into a format ready for the Web. With a CMS in place, the content owner can access the Website and publish directly to the Web or staging server, without any knowledge HTML code. And pre-defined permissions are in place for what, where, and by whom content may be posted.

Content Management Allows Faster Updates

In many cases, when an error or inconsistency occurs it must be forwarded to the content owner. Then, if the content owner would like the change made, (s)he will request it through a work order system. With a CMS in place, the content owner could simply login to the website an make the change, securely and efficiently.

Content Management Brings Greater Accountability

A CMS allows User accounts, administration roles, and access control. This means that certain pages or content may be created or edited only by specific accounts, or admin roles. Changes that are made can be tracked and it's possible to revert back to the original, or any previous revision if a change is made in error.

Content Management Brings Standardization

As mentioned above, the CMS provides a template based system. This means that the Look and Feel of the web presence are standardized, and there are only certain areas of the Webpage that can be changed by the content owner(s). For example, this page you are reading right now can be edited, but only the main text. Other areas, such as the top, bottom and sides of the page are editable elsewhere and only by a user with specific access permissions.

Because a content owners cannot make changes to other areas of the page, standardization across the entire web presence is guaranteed. Not to mention, moving this control away from content owners removes errors, temptation, risk and embarrassment for the company.

And the cost?

The good news is that a lightweight CMS, suitable for a modest-sized website, is not expensive. It can be as low as a few thousand dollars, or a complementary part of the web design project.

Of course, if your site is larger, or has complex requirements, the cost of a matching CMS will also grow. After all, you get what you pay for.

Next steps

If you are already working with a web design group, talk with them about what they can provide in terms of a content management system.
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