So you think you need a CMS?
Let’s start off by answering the question of what is a CMS? CMS stands for content management system, which is an application that’s designed around allowing a user to go in and manage the content for their website. Content management systems come in a wide variety of styles and complexities depending upon your usage requirements. In future posts we will come back and visit different CMS systems and explain what their best uses are, but first in this initial article we talk about the tell-tell signs to help you identify if you need a content management system.
You can ascertain that you may need a content management system if you’ve got a large amount of data that is going to need to be updated on a regular basis and that content is of a similar nature.
On the other hand if you do not have a need to add data to your website on an ongoing basis it might be to your benefit to simplify and go with static website and not get involved in building out a content management system. Content management systems have been designed to make it easy for non-technical personnel to update a website a regular basis and provide additional content that the readers might be interested in.
Now let’s not get content management systems or static websites confused with a website that has user interaction. These websites could be something as simple as a place for your customers the sign-up and communicate with each other, like a public forum or a bulletin board type system, or it could be as complex as a fantasy football system that allows everyone to log-in and do trades and build their fantasy football teams and keep up with their scores. These systems generally utilize software components to let the website users provide information and communication to each other.
So in short, if you find yourself in need of providing formation of a similar type, in a similar format to your users on a regular basis this is one of those tell-tell signs that a content management system might be of benefit to you. If a content management system is something that you’re interested in I suggest that you visit again in the future for an additional article that will tell you about the top three content management systems on the market and what each one’s major strengths and weaknesses are.