If you are thinking of launching a new website, or redesigning your current one, you should consider using a Content Management System (CMS). A CMS is an open-source platform that allows you to create and maintain a professional-looking website without having knowledge of HTML.
Many CMS solutions are free to use and most have thousands of design themes or templates available that you can purchase for use. There are sometimes free themes available for each CMS, but you can achieve a more customized look with a purchased theme.
There are many advantages to using a CMS to build your website, some of which include:
Simplicity of Use
Gone are the days of paying a developer to update content on your site. The easy-to-use CMS backend allows you to update your site’s content using a standard text editor, similar to what you would see in Microsoft Word®. This also allows for more frequent updates and the ability to continuously add fresh content, which helps search engine optimization (SEO).
Consistency With a website built in a CMS, you don’t have to worry about consistency in format and style of your site pages. Each template includes style sheets that will manage the look and feel of your site, including fonts, colors and sizes, to ensure continuity.
Search Engine Compatibility A CMS platform provides basic SEO optimization—the first step in getting your site primed to show up more prominently in web searches—including page titles that will automatically generate for each page of the site. For more advanced optimization, you can install add-ons to define specific page titles and descriptions for each page—another important way to boost your search rankings
Scalability Adding new content to a CMS is very easy, which makes it ideal for growing businesses. Expanding your product or service line? CMS platforms make adding new pages or images simple.
Multiple Users With most CMS platforms you can set up user accounts, allowing multiple people to update the site as needed. This is helpful if there is a time-sensitive update to be made and your regular ‘web person’ is out of pocket.
Add-Ons There are countless add-ons available for just about any function or feature you may need, including contact forms, blogging, social sharing, photo galleries, event calendars, web analytics, site backups, shopping carts and much more.
These are just some of the advantages to building your site using a CMS. There are many different CMS platforms available, but the most popular ones include WordPress, Joomla and Drupal. Do some research to determine the best fit for your needs or contact us to discuss which CMS might be right for you.
