Managing Content - The Basics of CMS

As you well understand having a website is great, but having a website which has up to date information and newly added content is even better.

There are number of different ways to change and update the content on a website. In this article I will go over the different options so that you will better be able to find the correct solution for your budget.

1. Webmaster
The first way to manage, update, change or create new content for a website is to have a dedicated webmaster working as an internal employee for your organization. This webmaster must have a working knowledge of such technologies as HTML, CSS, FTP, Graphic Design and other basic web development and web design methodologies. The webmaster would serve as the primary vehicle through which updates and modifications would be made to the website, through the utilization of professional web development protocol.

Pro
100% flexibility and customizability. With a full time webmaster, you may add, change or create any part of your website at anytime you please and you may change to look feel and function any way you want. You have 100% flexibility to add and change the website with absolutely no restrictions but the skill set and capabilities of your webmaster.

Con
Cost - to hire a full time web professional you must have enough updates and changes to the website to justify the salary of a full or part time employee.

2. Third Party Service Provider
This is a commonly used scenario for many organizations who do not have the need for a full or part time webmaster. In this scenario your organization would contract with a third party service provider - often the same company who built the website in the first place. When your organization needs updates or changes to the website, you would email or call the service provider who would implement those changes to the website. In this scenario there are two major fee structures:

1. Hourly
In the hourly fee structure the service provider performs the updates to the website and bills your organization based on the time it took to implement the changes. This is a good scenario for organizations who have non predictable changes that don’t occur in a regularly scheduled or predictable manner.

2. Contract
The contract fee scenario is best for situations where you organization will have regularly scheduled changes to the website such as monthly or weekly specials, promotions, events or constantly changing job postings. Since the workload is the same for every content change the service provider can quote a monthly contract price to make the changes to the site. This scenario is best for companies who have no full or part time webmaster and who are unwilling or unable to invest in the up front cost of the development of a content management system for their website.

3. Content Management System
Content Management Systems (CMS) are becoming more and more popular these days as organizations realize the benefit of having an up to date, dynamic and alive web presence. CMS allows non-technical employees of your organization to make changes to the website without having to understand professional web development protocols such as HTML, CSS, FTP or graphic design.

Through this option the web development agency who designs the website, builds into the site specific pieces of functionality and usability that allow non-technical content providers to serve as webmasters; updating, changing, modifying and adding content.

There are two major kinds of CMS:
1. Database Driven Control Panels
2. Software Based Contributions

Database CMS Approach
In the Database Model approach, an advanced CMS method, the web developer will build custom data structures to hold and store the web content, which is set up to automatically publish the content to the website. The non-technical content contributor would utilize user friendly forms to input the data which would then be stored in the database and automatically served up on the web page.

For example: For an news page, the web site content contributor would login into the Control Panel and fill out a form with data fields such as “News Item Title” “News Item Date” “News Item Description” etc. Then click “SAVE” that piece of content would then be stored in a database and automatically published onto the website with no further action required by the content contributor.

Pro
Anyone can modify the website, anyone who knows basic computing can login in and modify or change content. Low ongoing cost compared to hiring a 3rd party service provider at hourly or contract rates.

Con
Unnecessary cost for organizations with little or infrequent website changes. Large upfront and/or ongoing cost for advanced CMS for database and advanced server costs. Updateable pieces of the website are hard coded, so all updateable items much be identified at the outset of the development. Slightly more rigid options for updating content versus the Software Method.

Software CMS Approach
In the Software Based CMS method the web development agency builds the website using a specific methodology that will allow the website to work with specialized web design software. The software is comprised of basic word editing and layout tools similar to Microsoft Word, but has the capability of connecting directly to a web page and allowing the user to make changes to the website. This method eliminates the need for content contributors to have advanced web development proficiencies in HTML, CSS, FTP and Graphic Design by enabling them to utilize a simple and basic graphical user interface.

Pro
Anyone who knows how to use Microsoft Word can make modifications to the website. Low ongoing cost compared to hiring a 3rd party service provider at hourly or contract rates. Low upfront and ongoing cost compared to the Database CMS Model. Great flexibility, non-technical content contributor can operate with great freedom to make changes to the website.

Con
Small learning curve necessary for software. Lack of heavy constraints used in Database method gives user the freedom, but can result in non standardized web formatting and jumbled content structures.

In Conclusion
Regardless of which method you use to change and modify the content of your website, the most important thing is that you are keeping the content on your site fresh and alive.

In todays market of sophisticated web users, it is easy to sniff out stale and dusty content on websites that have not been changed in years. The ability of your website to remain alive, active, dynamic and constantly refreshing is a major contributing factor to your organizations ability to remain competitive online.

For more information about Content Management Systems and how they can help improve your web presence please contact us and we will set up a time to further educate you on the benefits and opportunities of CMS.