Why Your New Website Should be Built on a Content Management System
Over the last 5 years the Internet has transitioned from a static, information-providing medium to a dynamic, user-driven environment. Design styles have changed, yes, but the technology behind websites has changed even more. To provide the best user experience for your visitor, you need a website built on a Content Management System.
There are many advantages to using a content management system (CMS) for your new site. A CMS is basically a piece of software and a database that runs on your web server. The software has a password-protected administration area where you can make modifications to the information on your website. This simplifies the content editing process. Also, the software has optional add-ons which are relatively easy to install, but provide powerful functionality, like spam prevention, e-commerce, Google Analytics, and more.
One way to visualize a CMS is to picture it as a foundation to build on. You build up your functionality with add-ons and dress it up with the appropriate design and styling. There are lots of reasons to use a CMS, but here are the best ones:
* Don’t call your webmaster for content updates – save money by easily doing it yourself. Your web developer should set you up with an administrative username and password where you can login to make all the changes you need. Find a typo? Navigate to the page and click ‘Edit’ – Done. Need to add a page? Select its position in the menu and type out the page text – Done. In a CMS, the formatting and styling of the site is stored separately from the content, so there’s no risk of messing up the site by making changes to your content. Additionally, you get to handle the updates on your own schedule, so you’re never ‘in line’ for revisions.
* Almost any feature you’d like to add has already been developed. Calendar applications, social networking ’share’ links, analytics software, even e-commerce shopping carts are pre-made. For most of these apps, the customization time is minimal, while some, like the e-commerce app, require more intense customization and in depth knowledge. Always talk to your webmaster before installing a new app, but a CMS makes feature upgrades much easier than before.
* Search engines love content management systems. Well, as long as you install the SEO plug-in – which gives you search engine friendly URLs (www.yoursite.com/sweet-article-title instead of www.yoursite.com/?=node_32?=article). More specifically, search engines love fresh content, and by using a CMS, search engines think that your content will be updated more frequently than others, giving you a more frequent crawl rate (which is good because the changes and pages you add to your site will be indexed sooner and show up on the search results page faster).
* Starting and maintaining a blog just got easy. There’s no code to learn, just click ‘New Post,’ and start typing. When you’re finished, hit ‘Publish’ or ‘Save’ and it’s automatically featured on your home page and added to the correct categories you chose. With the SEO pack, the article is also submitted to the search engines. I notice that after I finish an article, it takes less than 24 hours for Google to have it in its index. One time it only took 45 minutes! Corporate blogging is something you need to do if you aren’t already. Having a large collection of helpful articles is important for showing your industry expertise and attracting more visitors to your website.
* E-Commerce is fully supported – and encouraged! Joomla’s VirtueMart extension is one of the most widely used shopping carts because it’s secure, efficient, and fully customizable. It plugs into your Joomla-based website, and provides a full-featured shopping cart and checkout system for your customers, as well as inventory and order management systems to help you manage your products more effectively.
As you can see, there are some very sizable advantages to using a Web 2.0 CMS as a backbone for your new website, giving you the capability to create an excellent user experience for your visitor, and grow your business using the power of the Internet. As always, I’m here for your comments and questions – email me – tony[at]vanivo[dot]com.