Choosing A Web Site Content Management System

As the saying goes on the web "Content is King." There is no argument that if you are going tohave an effective Internet presence you must have current, dynamic content that gives yourvisitors reasons to come back time and again. While content may be king there seems to be littlediscussion about the optimal way to manage this content for small to medium sized businesses.Have you ever noticed that when your building the web site you have plenty of helping handsbut once the site is launched and the daily grind of support kicks in it becomes harder andharder to find that help. This is why it is so important to evaluate your Content ManagementSystem (CMS) for you web site in the development stages. Every web site has some form ofcontent management system in place, except for those that never change. The CMS can be asinformal as an email to the web developer or a multi-million dollar computer program thatwarehouses data from several different databases. In focusing on small to medium sizedbusinesses I have decided to eliminate the big dollar systems and concentrate on the threemajor types of CMS's available. The first type of CMS is the default traditional and most widely used method I call the manualupdate system. This usually requires sending the information to the web developer. The webdeveloper then utilizes their FTP program and HTML coding skills to make the requestedchanges. The changes are then reviewed and approved by the requester. The problem with thismodel is that the web developer is usually a high priced contractor and not an in-houseresource. This means that you end paying a hefty price for web site changes. The cost of website changes becomes a budget issue so you end up reducing the number of changes you maketo your site in turn reducing its overall value. The second type of CMS is the WYSIWYG system. This model allows the web site owner touse one of the graphical web development tools on the market today such as FrontPage or NetObjects Fusion. These are great programs that allow you to make changes to the web site in agraphical look. The changes are simple and if you configure the software correctly you canupdate your web site with a few clicks of the mouse. The problem with this model is that youbecome dependent on the WYSIWYG tool. If you can't get to FrontPage then you can't makeyour change unless you resort back to our first model. But now it gets a little trickier. TheseWYSIWYG tools create very convoluted HTML code so manual changes can become very timeconsuming. Another draw-back of the model is that if your company utilizes a tool like this tocreate their site they may limit themselves to the graphical templates that come with thesoftware. You end up getting a site that looks pretty much like everybody else's. Furthermore, Ithink it is important for any company planning on building or revamping their web site to meetwith a web development company to at least review the best practices for web development. The final type of CMS is what I like to refer to as an integrated CMS. This type of ContentManagement Systems is built directly into the site during development. In order to makechanges the web owner simply enters in a secure URL, logins and makes changes to the sitewithout having to know any HTML or FTP commands. Changes are instant and all the userneeds is a web browser and access to the Internet. This has been a very successful model forour company because it allows us to build web sites that empower the web owners. Webowners can make changes to their sites as often as they like without the need for a high pricedweb developer. Of course the cost of a site with an integrated CMS will be a little higher but theoverall cost of ownership of the site will be dramatically reduced over time. Regardless of the model they choose, web site owners must acknowledge that their web sitedoes come with a Content Management System installed. An educated web site owner willensure that their site has a CMS that allows them to get the most out their web site.