I’ve just recently been messing with WordPress, and on some sites I’m using it as a content management system (CMS). While on Redd-Design it’s primarily a blog, I’m planning on switching the pages and template over to WordPress to keep it nice and easy to use.
One of my side-projects right now is my personal resume/portfolio site, which is completely WordPress driven. In the past I’ve also used Joomla, Drupal and Blogger, as well as dabble in a few custom CMS packages.
So what’s so great about a CMS?
The biggest reason why you should have a CMS is you’ll have (pretty much) complete control over your site, without having to bug your designer for every little change. While getting the site up and running, and having a solid design template, is going to require a designer/developer, you’ll be able to take over the reigns and let them focus on the big projects, instead of website content (unless you hired them to do so!).
Another plus of a CMS is security. In your company you probably have several people running marketing, HR, customer service, etc. Some of these people may need to access the site, but you might not want them touching everything. You and your web designer can have admin access, but by using a CMS instead of straight HTML, you can control what your employees can change. This’ll let them have some freedom within their section without 2am calls to your host wondering why your site is broken.
The newest version of WordPress (which we installed last week) allows the use of multiple blogs/sites using the same installation and database as the main site. This is also a plus if you’re planning on creating an intranet, or a support site.
The List
Here are some of the more popular content management systems and a bit about them:
- Joomla: Joomla is an award-winning content management system (CMS), which enables you to build Web sites and powerful online applications. Many aspects, including its ease-of-use and extensibility, have made Joomla the most popular Web site software available. Best of all, Joomla is an open source solution that is freely available to everyone.
- Drupal: Drupal is a free software package that allows an individual, a community of users, or an enterprise to easily publish, manage and organize a wide variety of content on a website. Hundreds of thousands of people and organizations are using Drupal to power an endless variety of web sites.
- WordPress: WordPress is a state-of-the-art publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.
- Movable Type: Powerful enough for building websites, blogs, and communities on a single platform. It’s easier than ever to publish and share information with Movable Type. Movable Type makes it simple to manage entire websites, start new blogs, and build an engaged community of readers and customers.
Moving forward…
Interested in getting a CMS up and running for your site? While we appreciate the ability that some CMS have, right now we’re primarily working with WordPress. So what does that mean? We can create WordPress templates that integrate seamlessly into your existing site, or create from-scratch sites that’ll make your customers go wow. We’ll install and configure only the best and brightest plugins your site’ll need. Need help coming up with content? We can write that too. Let us know if you want to integrate WordPress on your site. And look forward to a future article about where and why a one-off template is a good idea.
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