What is a Content Management System?
Posted on June 6, 2015
So you need a website. You know exactly how it is going to look already. You have spent weeks and weeks meticulously drafting up every single word and finding the perfect image for every page. But now how does it all actually work? That is where your Content Management System (CMS) comes into play. A CMS is essentially allows you to publish new pages, make edits to your blog, organize your various pages and far more. More times than not, it allows even a novice user to be able to add, delete, or modify pages and page content without the need of a programmer or web developer. There are dozens of free and paid CMS options available with WordPress, Drupal, and many others establishing their name in some fashion. Some you can be functional straight out of the gates while some are built on buggy technologies that will never accomplish what you are ultimately looking for. Finding the right CMS (or at least one you can work with) should be one of the first steps you consider when building out a website. For example, this blog is being written right now the the Clay Pot Creative custom CMS Kiln. We're writing directly into the HTML Source Editor now. There is a spellcheck feature I can turn on if I use the WYSIWYG. I can make things bold if I want to just by clicking a single button. I can even add this picture of a cat that is depressed it can't play the piano. There are lots of things that you can do within virtually any CMS, but that doesn't mean they are all the same. While the look and feel of your website are hugely important, making sure you can update it and work with your pages, navigation and more is just as crucial for the long term success of your site. Make sure that this is something you consider as you have your site developed, because a dynamic site that you can update with new content on an ongoing basis is a marketing tool that virtually every business needs.
