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Tips For Choosing A CMS For Your Website

Choosing a CMS (content management system) is an important first step to building your own website. The CMS provides a simpler way to manage website content without much prior knowledge of HTML, CSS, or other web programming languages. As using the web continues to grow quickly, new CMSs arrive to handle websites in different ways. Below are a few tips on picking the right CMS for your website.

Choose the CMS that fits your websites purpose.

Not all content management systems are created equal. You need to look at the main functions of your website to find the CMS that is right for you. If you are going to be working with a blog, one that provides a quick easy publishing from anywhere maybe good for you. Systems are available that allow users to make new blog post through the usual backend interface, but also by email and through applications on the iPhone, Android, and Blackberry devices. Alternatively some CMS’s are designed with multimedia in mind. These CMS are aimed at providing the best tools for audio and video sharing, but do not provide the robust text authoring tools that blogging platform would provide.

WYSIWYG

When choosing a CMS it is important to know who is going to be working with the site most. These days everyone “wants” or “needs” to be on the web, yet they may not have the technical skills to do the hardnosed coding. For this reason it is wise to choose a CMS that provides a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. WYSIWYG editors will give less technical users an interface that is common to typical office editing applications to keep them from needing to learn web programming.

Simple Backend Layout

Simplicity is best. A CMS with a simple backend interface is usually a good choice. It should have a consistent feel throughout its menus, and highlight the major functions. Typically the more complicated a CMS is the harder it becomes to use. By ensuring the CMS has a easily used interface, tech support questions can be minimized and clients will feel confident handling basic maintenance on their own sites.

Scalability

As a website grows its purpose may change from its original mission. Many CMS’s have plug-in repositories that allow additional features to be added to a site. Researching to make sure these features are available before hand will make sure you can grow your site without going through a major overhaul of the backend. Common add-on modules include:

* SEO tools
* E-commerce
* Galleries
* User logins for subscriber content
* RSS/Atom Syndication
* Site archival
* Pod-casting
* CRM applications

Design Template Control

The CMS you choose should provide and easy way of handling templates. Content is what the CMS handles and it should not have any control over the way your site looks. Having control over the design of a website will also allow it to take on an entirely new style when it feels dated without concerns of how to manage the transfer of data.

Support

When choosing a CMS it should be important to look into how much support documentation is around. Beyond just books and manuals, you will want forums and online knowledge base articles. Looking through forums will help find quick solutions to common problems from other people.

Summary

Keep in mind there may not be a perfect CMS solution for you. Remember to research a CMS before you pick one. Though a lot of CMSs are free, they can still cost you time, in tech support or rebuilding, if you do not choose the one that will fit your website or clients best. Below is a chart of some of the most popular CMS used, and how they handle the features I mentioned above.

Click to View the Chart

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