how do you manage your content?
by creative team in news, thoughts at 10:49 am
the core of any website today is the relevance of its content to the visitor, and how it clearly communicates the company’s or brand’s message to the visitor. in today’s fast paced digital world, keeping the content updated is as impactful to the user experience as the content itself. back in the day, the way to update or edit a website’s content required a working knowledge of html (challenge: the average business owners didn’t’ know html, so content was static for extended periods of time). today, there are many tools on the market to allow website owners to update their content frequently with little or no knowledge of html coding. this creates many new opportunities for business owners to communicate with their customers, keep them engaged, and updated early and often. a content management system (cms) is a great way to create/edit the content and images that are the core of your website. over the years, websignia has built websites using off-the-shelf cms systems and we’ve developed custom systems to address specific client needs.
content management systems come in several flavors, its important to choose the one that best matches your taste. here are 2 flavors we normally recommend:
hosted: these include solutions like squarespace, citysoft, and volusion. a hosted cms is fully developed by a company and then offered to the public as a finished product. hosted solutions generally do not allow for major modifications to the source code, but do relieve the headache of maintenance and updates.
open source: drupal, dotnetnuke, joomla, and wordpress are examples of open source platforms that allow a developer to download a copy of the source code and rewrite or “customize” the code around the user interface and experience design, business rules, and functionality to suite the business’ needs. these cms platforms allow for you to create scalable content driven websites and give access to rapidly growing communities of 3rd party developers who are creating unique “add ons” that provide special functionality.
Now that you have a better understanding of what’s available, here are three platforms that we often work with and recommend to friends and clients alike.
wordpress
wordpress is easy to setup and installs in minutes. wordpress also makes it simple to publish content with limited “techspertise”. in the last 8 years, wordpress has built a large developer community, easy-to-use templates, and a robust help center. part of the charm of wordpress is that it’s customizable, flexible, and scalable. wordpress also provides special functionality like: the ability to tag to content for search engine visibility, social media syndication, and event calendars.
joomla
joomla uses “modules” for users to upload their content into “articles” and easily change the look of their website. while there are pre-defined templates a user can install, it also provides the option for a web designer to be able to customize the look and feel of the page layouts and designs. joomla is suited for “enterprise” websites where the owner/operator may be more tech saavy because the navigation of joomla requires a level of technical administration to manage.
drupal
drupal has many of the same elements as joomla: modules, coding editors, plugins. however, drupal has its own “framework”, which means drupal has capabilities and features that are added through plugins. there’s also a large community of 3rd party developers constantly releasing new plugins to keep in step with the demands of the interactive industry.
choosing the right cms really depends on your business model, level of expertise, and content publishing needs. one-size usually doesn’t fit all. feel free to give us a call and pick our brains. tell us what your looking to achieve and we can help figure out which cms is right for you!
