CMb 2003-01
Why every small website needs a CMS
Categorised under: articles, content management
You are about to get a website built for your business. Having found a good web design house, you are looking forward to seeing the results of their creative efforts. So far so good.
Once the website is setup, and the customers start rolling in, you will want to make ongoing changes. These could be very small, such as changing a phone number, or adding a news item. New products, or shifts in business direction, will necessitate larger updates to the site. Chances are, though, you will still be happy with the design, and it’s just the text that needs to be changed.
While the web design house did a great job, you don’t want to have to go back to them for every change. A hundred small changes in a year will leave you both frustrated, and is not economic for either party.
This is where a content management system (CMS) comes in. Sitting behind the scenes, it gives you the ability to maintain your own site.
No website larger than a few pages should be without a CMS to manage it.
What is a CMS?
A content management system is a software package specifically designed to manage a website. It is installed by the web designers, but intended to be used by you.
First off, it provides you with a simple, non-technical way of updating your content. This is typically (but not always) done via a web-based interface that works much like Word does.
Just point-and-click, type in the new words, and hit save. Your site is instantly updated.
Equally easy is adding new pages, deleting old ones, or restructuring the site to match your new business model.
The CMS also automates menial tasks, such as applying the same page layout and appearance across the site. Menus and other navigation are also automatically produced.
Along with the many other administrative tools, this leaves you to concentrate on the words, and not on the technology.
What are the benefits?
A content management system makes life much easier in many ways:
- You are no longer dependent on the web designers making changes for you.
- Changes can be made any time they are needed, day or night. This is increasingly important as your business comes to rely on the website as a communications channel.
- All the technical details are simply handled by the CMS, allowing anyone to manage and update the site.
- Multiple staff can keep the site up to date, instead of being restricted to just one person. The CMS will track who is doing what, avoiding potential confusion.
- You can even ensure that each staff person can only update the sections of the site they are responsible for.
- The CMS ensures that all the pages are consistent in design, and will build all the menus and other
navigation for you. - The many other powerful features of the CMS allows the site to grow in sync with your business.
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 simply 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.
If you would like to shop around, we maintain a comprehensive list of CMS vendors, which would be a good start. You can find this at: www.steptwo.com.au/cm/vendors/
James Robertson is the founder and Managing Director of Step Two Designs, a vendor-neutral consultancy located in Australia.
James is recognised as one of the world-wide thought leaders on the topics of web content management and intranet strategy. He has worked with many organisations in both the public and private sectors, including Fortune 500 companies and Federal Government agencies. 
12 Comments:
very informative
Yeah, I agree. Thanks to your article, we’re thinking about adding a CMS to our site to make things easier.
Thanks for article, Good information keep it up!!!
This is very informative. Thank you. I have a question. I am about to have a web site built which will also be hosted by the web designer company. They have told me the CMS belongs to them and I will only be able to take the design and content if I choose another host in 12mths. What does that mean to me? Do I start over again in 12 mths (or whenever I choose to move)
Hi Janet, that sounds like a bad deal! I would shop around, as there are plenty of organisations that can provide you with a website and supporting CMS. (It clearly pays to read the fine print!)
Hi, I’m just starting out with web designing. How do I go about organising a CMS website? Do I need special software? I’ve looked on the internet for information but it all seems a bit confusing. I feel like I need one of those books “CMS for Dummies”.
That was a partial article. James said that its easy to maintain website with cms. And for a small website it could cost five times bigger than a non cms website. Although chances are low that a less skill person can manage a cms. So client have to depend again on web provider. Risks could also be high on cms. In any scripting problem it could take long time to solve or even could be more complex situation client might imagine. To avoid these types of complexity client have to give maintenance to provider and these will also charge more. So if one have a big organization big budget and rich content then go for a cms. Otherwise it may kill your valuable time
Hi James,
Good article, is there any disadvanatges of using a CMS ?
@Sudhir – the only disadvantage is that CMS-based systems are normally built on page templates. That means you probably won’t have pages that are significantly different in design on your website. This is as opposed to hand-coded sites where each page can look totally different.
I’ve just developed a CMS for use by churches, local community groups and small businesses, basically anyone that needs to implement content management on a small website. (I found this article whilst researching the competition)
It’s a blatent plug, but there is a live demonstration of the CMS available at http://www.divinewebsites.com.au if you’d like to see how one works.
Thanks.
I’m wondering how can you organize the look of your website which has a CMS, how is CMS combined with html, flash or other..
gud content
The only disadvantage of a CMS is the price. Most small businesses find it hard to fork out the initial start up costs of a CMS.
Also, @sudhir, its worth having a look around because not all developers use templates. The company i work for does both – templates from $700 (but still are compeltely customisable with colours, logos, etc- just the layout is slightly generic) and entirely unique websites designed specifically for the company from about $2000- $3000.
@Mark, CMS is pretty much a software that integrates all the other html, flash, etc. Like the name suggests, its a way of managing the content, as opposed to being the content (if that makes any sense!)
So you can still integrate flash, etc. no worries. This is something you just need to speak to your web developer about.
Hope that gives you an idea of what to look for.