The Savvy CIO

How can you get the most from a content management system?

To start, be aware that content management can mean two very different things:

A content management system is software that allows non-technical users to update a website.

-OR-

A content management system is software that stores, organizes and controls access to company documents, files and information.

To my knowledge, no single piece of software does both of these things. At least not well. These are two different pieces of software solving different problems that (unfortunately) share the same name.

A document-focused CMS will be covered in the next post. Today we’ll focus on CMS for a company website. So to ask our question more specifically,

How can you get the most from a website content management system?

How a Website CMS Works

A CMS for your website allows your staff to update content, news posts and photos to your site. A CMS provides a “what you see is what you get” (WYSIWYG) editor, so no knowledge of website coding is necessary. Find a staff member who has the technical skills to embed an image in an email and you’ve found a staff member savvy enough to update your CMS.

Make sure your appointed content manager pays attention to detail and has a second set of eyes on their updates. Silly mistakes on your website make your whole company look bad.

How to Know If You Need a Website CMS

A website without a content management system will either never get updated or cost a lot of money, because a designer must update the code every time a change is made. The truth is, faced with the hassle and cost of regularly updating a website through a designer, your site will go stale.

If your site is simply a static online presence that validates your business to prospects you are already in contact with, a CMS isn’t important to you. But if you intend to gain business from your website through online marketing and search engine visibility, a CMS is critical.

How to Implement a Website CMS

Many developers provide a CMS when they develop a site. If you have an existing site not on a CMS, you’ll need to retain a design firm or a skilled freelancer to help make the transition.

Some content management systems allow you to put only the web pages you want to be able to update on the system. This means less time and cost to covert your site. Updating only a few pages costs very little and allows your company to regularly update key content. Search engines and readers alike prefer current content. Even a single updateable page can significantly increase your online presence.

If you are starting from scratch, evaluate a firm’s CMS along with their design work. The firm you are working with may have a preferred system. The most popular open source CMS offerings are Wordpress and Drupal. The Savvy CIO’s company prefers webEdition. Find out what CMS a firm is using, ask to see it in action, and know what would happen should you ever want to move to a different host or developer. A proprietary CMS can be a form of lock-in with a development firm.

Have you had good or bad experiences with a specific CMS? Click Comment above and let us know what worked (or didn’t work) for you.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 13th, 2009 at 12:34 pm and is filed under Hosted Solutions, Web Design. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.