WHY PEOPLE NEED THIS

Many of our clients are startup companies.  Startup companies usually have the same issues. 

1.       They have a tight budget

2.       They will need a lot of changes to their site as they "figure out" their new business

3.       They don't know what they want

It is a huge business problem for web designers because we want to offer our clients something inexpensive and we know that most customers are disappointed with their first website.  Why are they disappointed?  Because of the reasons listed above.  They do not know what they want; they just know they do not have any money.

On the other side of the coin, our largest customers have so many change requests that are also looking for ways to get more done for lower costs.

There is a solution to all this.  The solution is to use one of many content management systems (CMS).  CMS systems are growing in popularity and many of them are free.

WHAT IS A CMS?

A CMS system is a website construction system that works the day you install it, allows you to customize it nearly every way you could imagine, and makes it easy to update your website yourself using friendly tools built right into your website.

You need a CMS if you are willing to update your own website as long as it is easy to do.

Common CMS tools are available for free.  These free tools always need to be setup and customized and you will have to pay someone to do that work for you.  The costs of setting up a CMS for you could range from as low as $500 to $2500 or more.  It depends on many factors.   Once you are setup, you can easily add new pages, delete pages, and update most of your content yourself. 

CMS systems are designed to easily handle very small sites and scale to very large sites quite easily.  My own site, www.AnythingInternet.com, is built on a CMS.  There is no way you can tell by looking at it.  It is much easier to maintain than my old site.  I will never use anything else for my own sites.

POPULAR CONTENT MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS (CMS)

www.joomla.com - Joomla is the most popular system.  It has a lot of add-ons available.  It is a little harder to learn than other systems.  But apparently it's easy enough because a lot of people use this system.

www.drupal.com - Drupal is easy to use and also very powerful.  It is also easier to customize compared to Joomla.  I really like this system and we use it for many of our projects.  This is what I used for www.AnythingInternet.com and for www.ZeonGlobalEnergy.com.  Check those two sites out and see how different they are.  That tells you how adaptable these systems really are.

www.wordpress.com - The WordPress system is only a blog.  It has less features than Drupal or Joomla, however, most people don't need the other features and that makes WordPress extremely popular.  It is easy to use and has many great features.  It is a better fit for people interested in the blog style website.

There are many other systems and all have their own strengths and witnesses.  I can find you something easier to use or something with more community features or something with a shopping cart system that is easy to integrate.  Choosing your CMS is an important decision.

Just remember that for most companies a CMS is a good investment.  If your webmaster is unfamiliar with CMS tools, please contact us for a free consultation.