chris.smith's sandbox: Checkpoint

Enterprise Web Content Management System

If you are publishing a lot of content from a number of authors, you should seriously consider a content management system (CMS). A quality CMS can help you streamline your publishing processes. It can allow you to develop an information architecture that is robust, yet flexible. It can allow you to manage your content efficiently and cost-effectively.

What are the benefits of a web content management system?

A CMS makes it easier for people to create, edit and publish content on a website. Historically, website publishing has required significant technical skills (HTML, programming). A good CMS allows non-technical authors and editors to easily and quickly publish their content.

At some point even a content management site will need to be upgraded with a new and fresh visual design. Whereas static sites require a complete rebuild in these cases, content-managed sites can have a new design applied to its templates. The entire site, including all archived content, will very quickly reflect the new look and feel. This means that future site redesign projects will usually be less expensive than previous development projects, not more expensive, which is the case with static web development.

Because content management based sites are easily adaptable, you can implement all the new ideas you get for your site even after it has been completed. Often companies get great ideas for their sites very shortly after going live. This is common because it’s often not until you use a site that you begin to see additional possibilities.

With static sites, site-wide changes can be extremely costly, so such ideas usually get tabled until the next redesign. This means that between rebuilds there are missed opportunities that could have maximized a site’s effectiveness. With database driven content managed sites, site-wide changes such as adding new sections, implementing extranets, or a host of other possibilities, can be easy integrated into the site without having to rebuild it or wait for years until a redesign becomes necessary.

This project is sponsored by OPIN.