CMS

cmsdandeluca You may not be aware of whether you have a content management system (CMS) for your website. However, if you have a system that allows you to change and add content to your website without coding in HTML or some other language (php, asp, etc.), then you probably do. I think having a CMS is key to making your website work for your business goals and here’s why:

Ease of updating content

Having great content that is updated regularly is key to attracting visitors to your site and getting repeat visits. A good CMS will give you the ability to regularly update your content without having to have a developer hand code everything for you.

Multiple types of content

Sometimes it makes more sense to create a video to show how a product works than just having a written article. You should be able to easily add different types of content to your website with a CMS, enhancing the customer experience.

Ability to publish to multiple channels at once

Most readers still come directly to your website, but others will read your content through an RSS feed, or on an aggregator site. Having a CMS which supports XML (RSS) feeds will make it much easier for your content to get out into the wild and give your customers the option to read it however they want.

New features

If you choose a CMS with a good development cycle, you’ll be able to implement new features and ideas as they hit the market. While a website doesn’t need to be cutting edge, it’s a good idea to keep up with features that most visitors expect.

Accessibility

While it isn’t dependent on a CMS, most CMS’ include good accessibility practices which allow your content to be visible to people on a wide variety of devices (mobile, text readers, etc.). This will become even more important in the near future as the mobile market continues to grow.

Portability

A CMS usually stores all your content in a database so even if you move to another CMS it should be possible to migrate your content. Many CMS’ have the ability to export your data in a way that can be imported elsewhere as well. Having a site in HTML or some other language is also portable, but a CMS separates your content (important!) from the design and functionality of the site, making it much easier to switch to something else.

Focus development on differentiators

Having a CMS lets your developers focus on features that may differentiate you from your competition. This helps put expenses into projects which are more easy to measure return on investment (ROI).

Let experts work in their expertise

Designers, programmers and consultants can still be very valuable to your business, but now they can focus on what they do best – making great, usable designs and functions to help you attain your business goals.

Support

A CMS is a product that comes along with its own support system. If you have a custom-coded website and it breaks, you have to spend time and money getting it fixed, instead of running your business.

Summary

Even with a CMS there is a time for custom-coded features, but a CMS will give you the ability to spend effort on those features that will make a difference to your business instead of re-inventing the wheel. One caveat – if your website is a product or service, you’ll obviously want to spend time developing that product. But even then, you should still have some way to create and edit content on your site, and that still means a CMS of some kind.

(photo by dandeluca @ Flickr CC)

Technorati Tags: CMS, content management system, content strategy, content, business website, business

For companies in the media sector, content is their stock in trade. They understand content as a woodworker understands the grain of a quarter sawn Birdseye Maple board. In my tenures with these companies I have learned an invaluable, oft unbendable truism that has helped me to model Content Management Systems. Content cannot actually change its representation to fit a framework, frameworks need be engineered to fit content. More simply put, articles published in monthly magazines are usually issue-based in relation to each other and need to be managed by a tool designed to handle that content representation. They cannot or should not be shoe-horned into a blogging tool simply because its free, has a funny sounding name and you like the pretty icons that come with it.

Recently I consulted a media company on how they can use open source CMS tools to help with a sub-segment of their Content Entry work. As I looked out at the many many many many available options, I felt a Sazbean post coming on. Are people becoming overwhelmed by all the CMS choices out there, giving up, and settling on the first tool they can get working? What is the likelyhood that the CMS you got working is the right one for the kind of content you have?

Joomla was one of the CMS applications that popped out early on as a tool that might help my client. Joomla is a free, open sourced content management system forked from the Mambo server PHP code base. If you have used Mambo, as I had years ago, you will see it continues its full featured administrator tools. While both Joomla and Mambo have tons of components that can extend the base functions, my experience is that they tend to stretch the content to fit into the framework. Best to evaluate it on its base strengths. What Joomla does well is supporting post based sites such as blogs, news, and info distribution feeds. If you content is periodic, self-contextualized and mostly text and images then this tool will scratch your itch.

Here are some tips on how to use Joomla

The base class in Joomla for content is an Article.
Joomla doesn’t really support the concept of a ‘page’. If you want to create an ‘About Us’ page, for example, you are going to create an Article. Then you will link a Menu item with an internal link to that article. Using the term ‘Article’ to describe the base class for content is an example of how Joomla’s and Mambo’s designers see the world: as periodic content
Articles should be structured: Sections have Categories, Categories have Articles.
Categories and Sections can be used as indexes, allowing Joomla to pull all Articles under a Section or Category
Like many CMSs, images are a separate class, allowing for the reuse of images without saving duplicates. Use the Media Manager to upload your images and then use them in your articles by hitting the button at the bottom of the wysiwyg editor
Menus drive appearance of content. When you create a menu link you can set show/hide options on different parts of content on the right. Two menu links can have different settings and point to the same article. The article itself is unchanged, only the display changes.
Blog views is usually by date, but it can be changed to order in the menu link preferences
Joomla has different rights levels for administrator access, so you can limit editors to only things they are allowed to break
Joomla also has restricted options so that only logged in people can view the content
Sites are made up of modules and plugins. The menu is a module, as is a poll or a login widget.
Modules and plugins can be told to show up where you want them, left, right, breadcrumb, user1 etc. These are setup by the template creator as to where they show up in the page
Oh, and tons of free templates are available, which some people call skins. Use your favorite search engine for ‘joomla templates’

Technorati Tags: CMS, content management, content management systems, internet consulting, internet business consulting

Why Every Business Should Have a Content Management System (CMS)

Understanding Content – Tips for using Joomla