Why Your Website Needs A Content Management System

16 May 2007 | lindsaystewart@mcwebs.com.au | Printable Page Icon Printable Page

Ever seen a website that is extremely out of date? How about a message from President Bill Clinton regarding the dangers of Y2K? [Thanks to the guys at Ghost Sites for having too much spare time.]  

A website can be powerful tool for a business or organisation but it must be kept relevant and up to date. Not all websites are as extreme as the Y2K site but it is depressingly common for businesses and organisations to have an obviously out-of-date site. Some of the reasons for this include:

  • Too hard. There are specialised skills needed to edit a website and it just takes too long to learn everything that you need to know.
  • Too big. There are just too many pages to keep track of and changes begin to take longer and longer.
  • Too expensive. Buying specialised web-editing software or paying a web designer to make changes for you just becomes too expensive.

Content Management Systems (CMS) are designed to overcome these challenges and make it easy for you to manage your website.  A CMS allows you to update, create and manipulate the text, pictures or other content on your site as easily as possible. You supply the content, words and pictures, and the CMS takes care of the rest.

Edit Update Content Management System

Benefits of Using A Content Management System

  • It's faster
    Your information can be moved, duplicated, added, deleted, hidden, resized, converted and reorganised rapidly online. Menus, vital to a usable website, are automatically updated. Footers and contact information can be quickly updated across the whole website.
  • A consistent look is enforced
    Traditional maintenance of websites can often result in a confused and “broken” website design. Managed Content uses “templates” to ensure that any changes to the site are consistent to the specified design.  This is especially relevant for websites where multiple users, each with their own ideas on appearance and presentation, are adding content to a website. 
  • It's upgradeable
    A CMS allows features to be easily added in the future. A "new look" can be swapped in later without needing to touch the content. Layouts tailored to particular devices, such as mobile phones or PDAs, can be added to your site, again without touching the content.
  • Removes the need to purchase specialised software
    The CMS provides everything that is needed to maintain the website. This removes the need to invest in additional software to create web pages and web graphics. The CMS also provides a word-processor-like tool to add content which removes the need for specialised training and skills.
  • Reduces hidden costs
    A CMS-driven website might be more expensive to build initially but once you factor in the the cost of your time, specialised software and/or paying for minor content edits, the CMS is an obvious winner.

Performance Comparison: Traditional Web Design Tools Vs CMS

Add web page traditionally

In a CMS site

  • Create page in specialised software taking care to maintain consistent look with existing web pages on site.
  • Add text to page using specialised software.
  • Resize graphics using specialised software. Convert them into webfriendly format.
  • Link graphics into the page using specialised software.
  • Upload new web page and necessary graphics files to server.
  • Test that the page and graphics links transfer correctly to web server.
  • Add page using a simple menu. All menus are updated automatically.

Create web page traditionally

In a CMS site

  • Create page in specialised software taking care to maintain consistent look with existing web pages on site.
  • Add text to page using specialised software.
  • Resize graphics using specialised software. Convert them into webfriendly format.
  • Link graphics into the page using specialised software.
  • Upload new web page and necessary graphics files to server.
  • Test that the page and graphics links transfer correctly to web server.
  • Add page using a simple menu. Consistent look is guaranteed by
    software.
  • Add text online or by cutting and pasting from word processor.
  • Upload pictures using a simple menu. Images are converted and resized by the software.

What Content Management System do we use?

mcWebs uses TYPO3 to underpin its managed content service. TYPO3 is software widely used by governments, businesses and organisations all over the world. It is actively improved by hundreds of professional web designers and developers.

To learn more about the highlights and features of TYPO3, please visit their website. 

Conclusion

A CMS removes much of the hassle around keeping your site up to date. We build all of our sites as CMS sites because this gives the most flexibility to our clients. Dynamic, complex and useful sites can be easily built and maintained with a minimum of fuss and expense.