Do You Need A CMS?
Keeping Your Website Fresh
With the need to keep websites fresh and up-to-date, more and more customers are opting for a Content Management System (CMS) for their new website, some customers are asking what is it and do they really need one?
So What is a CMS?
A CMS is a tool used to create, edit, manage, and publish content in a consistently organized fashion. In the case of a CMS for your website, it generally will require no technical knowledge and include a WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) editor. This editor will typically have similarities to Microsoft Word and allow you to manipulate content, photos, pdfs and other documents with ease. While different CMS tools may provide different features, many of the following features should be a part of a good system:
- The ability to set levels of access and authority
- Easily add/edit/delete pages for both content and photos
- An integrated navigation system to automatically add or delete pages from the navigation system and site map
- Changes can be taken through an approval process
- A history of changes is maintained, including who made the changes and when
- Version control capabilities to easily revert back to a previous version if necessary
- The ability to create an online form easily and quickly
- The ability to create pages that may not be available on the website but can be accessed through a direct link
Do You need a CMS?
A CMS is a valuable tool for companies that want to keep their content updated quickly and easily and maintain that control internally, but that do not have the technical knowledge to handle HTML programming. It can also be a valuable tool for companies, even if they have an IT department or someone else internally who knows HTML. Generally, their time is better spent on their core responsibilities. It is more cost effective to have someone who is not specialized and perhaps at a lower pay rate keep the site updated.
One of our customers, who opted for a CMS, sent this recent testimonial:
"We opted to include the Content Management System as part of our website project last fall and have been very pleased with our decision. Requiring no programming expertise of any kind, the system enables us to make the kinds of routine changes we need to make to our site on our time, giving us the flexibility that is so important in today's marketplace. For us, it's become a necessity."
C. Cole
Ultimate Living
Keeping your content fresh and adding new content is important for the visitors to your website. Outdated content will portray an undesirable image for your company. If the last press release on your website is from 2005, users might wonder if you are even still in business.
In addition, search engines love new content. If your site becomes stale, then search engines will quit visiting your site, which can lead to lower search result rankings. Adding press releases, articles, blog entries, updated products, etc. to your site will attract those search engine “spiders” and you can be assured that your site is indexed and updated regularly.
If you would like to find out more about Masterlink’s CMS or determine if it might be valuable tool for your company, please contact us at 214-323-2100 or sales@masterlink.com