To CMS Or Not To CMS; That Is The Question: A Look At The Need For Content Management Systems (CMS) When Building A Website

A fair question to ask for every blogger or website owner today is whether you really need a content management system or not. After all, before the CMS, we all update our content manually then simply uploaded it to the server. It worked well then, it still works now, so is a CMS really necessary?

The best place to start is always in the definition of terms: what exactly is a CMS? A content management system is software that stores the content on your website thereby allowing easy editing and multiple web administrators for a single system to collaborate on updates. The web developer builds your website into a CMS and when you take over the site, you can change and update anything you like even with limited experience in handling the back-end of a website.

What is it good for?

Now that we know what it is, let’s see what a CMS can do for you:

1.  You can build your own website from scratch

Once upon a time, building a website required hiring a web developer and paying them a bunch of money to create your dream website. After they were through, you still had to call them whenever you needed to update anything. Not anymore! With CMS, you can build your own website that would be flexible and easy to use.

For instance, let’s compare a purely HTML website design with one using a CMS. HTML websites are fast to build as long as you can learn HTML. It will then be the website builder’s job to maintain the site, which leaves you at a loss should this person be unavailable.

With CMS, you are building your site on a standardized system. This makes it user-friendly and non-technical meaning virtually anyone can build, edit and maintain the website without much tech knowledge. You become a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor where all you need to know is how to create a Word document and you can create all the pages, posts, articles and emails that you want. No HTML knowledge needed.

2.  Updates are as easy as pie

If you want to quickly add or update some content on your website, and you had no CMS, you would have to call the web developer and have them add the item for you. This could take a while plus you will have to pay a service charge.

If you have a CMS, you have full control of the website so no need for the web developer. You simply access the back-end, make the changes and voila! 

3.  Redesigning is a breeze

There are times when you want to change the look of a particular page or give your entire website a facelift. This can be possible without a CMS; only it will take longer, require a complete site shutdown and cost you some to get your web developer to do it.

With a CMS, you can do it yourself (or still get the web developer) and you won’t have to shut everything down to do it. You simply pull down the old design and put up the new one like you were putting up new wallpaper.

4. Increased functionality

CMSs are constantly upgrading themselves, which allows you to access the latest upgrades to make your site more effective and efficient. In addition, all these upgrades come with easy to understand training tools to allow you to use them. The alternative would have been calling your web developer to upgrade your site every so often.

5.  Consolidates management

It is always great when you can bring all the elements of your business together and manage them simultaneously. After all, they all tie into and affect one another. CMS allows you to bring everything you need as far as you website is concerned under one roof, in a manner of speaking. You will get SEO, social media marketing, blogging and email marketing along with your CMS. In addition, you can create registration forms, store customer information and collect fees using CMS.

But before you make that commitment…

You need to consider a few pertinent issues that come with having a CMS:

• Control: As a content editor, you may never have 100% control of your content. You see, your website is fitting into another structure that has its own set of management. For instance, some custom work may not be allowed through the CMS interface thereby requiring a developer, which was what we were avoiding by using a CMS.
  

• Updates: You need to ask yourself how often you will need to update your site’s content. If you are running content like press releases, blogs and the like, you will need a system that allows easy addition of new content such as a CMS. However, if you don’t have serial content, a good web developer may be enough.
  

• Up-front costs:  Even with the free downloads and free plugins, no CMS is absolutely free. There are initial costs to pay when integrating your site into a CMS. It also takes quite some time due to the various areas with editable data. This vastly increases for a multiple editor system because all the possible content and changes to content must bea consideration beyond the parameters of the original site.
  

• Maintenance: You are now part of another system and as such, you have to stick within the parameters of that system. This limits the amount of upgrading you can do to your site meaning you either stick with the system or hack in an upgrade. This adds up to the ongoing cost of maintenance since a simple change can become a complex (and expensive) integration with a CMS.

Conclusion

Ultimately, you will have to weigh out the pros and cons of having a CMS. There are plenty of options out there and you are sure to find something that works for you but as with anything in life and business, find out what real value it will add to your site before signing up.

All the best in everything.