It is likely that your current website will require you to call your designer for changes, and that process will take anywhere from a day to a week.

Imagine being able to log into your website and then making changes to a page right on the spot. Maybe you want to add pages to your site for a new product or service you are rolling out. These things are possible with a CMS. However, at the moment, it is likely that your current website will require you to call your designer for changes, and that process will take anywhere from a day to a week.

What is a CMS?
Quite simply, a CMS is software that sits on your website’s server. It allows you to edit your site without hiring someone to change hard code, and it also allows your site to change a lot. The CMS software uses a database on your server to store all of your website’s information and then pulls it out later to assemble the entire package.

A Typical CMS Editor

How do you set up a CMS for your website?
We suggest you hire a web designer to set up the CMS for you. They will propose a design for your site, and create a template for all of the pages. Using a web designer allows you to ensure that all of your pages fit in with your corporate identity and function the way you want them to. Once the designer sets up the CMS on your server, creates the design and then loads content into the pages, they will provide you with the information and training necessary to log into your account and make changes.

How do you use one?
To use a CMS, you log into your site over the internet, and the CMS will display a “Dashboard” which provides access all of your pages, images and videos and blog posts (if your website has a blog). Once you select a page, editing it is actually rather easy. People who know how to use Microsoft Word will feel relatively at home with a CMS editor since most of the controls are similar.

Advantages to a CMS
Your CMS will likely prove helpful to you or your business because of the following advantages:

• Faster turnaround time for new content and pages
• Multiple people in an organization can change content relevant to their department or branch.
• Reduced site maintenance costs
• Consistency across pages
• Improvement of site flow and organization
• Ability to add one or 1,000 pages
• Backups of previous content
• All of your content is searchable

A CMS allows you to give separate logins to your marketing director, your secretary and yourself, allowing the experts on each field to make changes directly. It also backs up all of your previous pages in case you delete them or you want to reference them later. It allows you to change how the site is structured with the click of a button, and it allows you to make changes to the website as they come in. If you want to make a change that effects every page on the site, it’s no problem, because a CMS handles that too.

In addition, a CMS allows you almost infinite expansion options. If you started out with 3 employees serving one country, your website would likely still service you when you have 300 employees serving 30 countries.

Which CMS do you recommend?
Whether you are a large corporation or a mom and pop shop, we recommend WordPress because of its easy to use interface and huge online support base.

Like the idea of a CMS-powered website? Still have questions? Contact us!

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