Mailbag: How Do I Edit My Website?
One of the main concerns of almost every client we have worked with is how they will be able to edit the content on their website after the development process is over. No one wants to call up their web developer every time they decide to change a few words on their homepage, and in 2010 (almost 2011) you shouldn’t have to! There are tons of free Content Management Systems (CMSs) that allow a website owner to control the content on their site without knowing anything about the underlying code.
What is a CMS?
A Content Management System does exactly what you would expect, it provides an easy way for a website owner to manage the content on their site. Basically, it provides a user interface for someone to be able to create and edit information in the database that is running their site. This strips the content from the code and allows you to make changes similar to how you would edit a Microsoft Word or Pages document.
A preview of the Edit Post page in WordPress, the CMS that runs the Perception website
A CMS also makes it possible to keep your website dynamic. If you have a blog, all you need to worry about is writing your next post and the CMS will take care of paginating your posts, updating your article archives, and your featured blog post on your homepage.
There are a lot of other great things that can be automated with your CMS, and hopefully we’ll get into them in future articles, but let’s keep it simple for today….
How do I get my site setup in a CMS?
If your site is not currently powered by a CMS, talk to a web developer and try to get a quote on moving your current site over to a CMS. Depending on the complexity of your site and which content management system you decide to use, this cost could vary dramatically. I can hear the burning question: “How much does this cost???” Well, we can’t speak for anyone else but assuming you have a basic brochure site and there aren’t a lot of unique page layouts, this would cost anywhere between $1,500 and $2,000 to bring a site over to a CMS.
Which CMS should I use?
There are a lot of options available when deciding which CMS to use. It can be overwhelming searching through all of them to find the best site for your needs, so here are our recommendations.
WordPress (http://wordpress NULL.org) – Free
If you are running a fairly small site or are trying to stick to a tight budget, WordPress is a free CMS that can be easily extended to fit the needs of almost any website. It currently powers around 13% of all websites on the internet!
(http://wordpress NULL.org/)ExpressionEngine (http://expressionengine NULL.com/) – Starting at $99.00
If you have a larger site or more of a budget to work with, ExpressionEngine is definitely worth your consideration. It is a fully-featured CMS that is very easy to work with. It is more customizable than WordPress out of the box and might require a little more time up-front to get the hang of the system, but is probably a better solution for organizations with a lot of content broken up into different sections on their site.
(http://expressionengine NULL.com/)
Other considerations
One important thing to consider is the community that is using a CMS. If there is a large community you can assume that the CMS is reliable and working well for its current user base. Also, if you ever need development work and the person who built your site is no longer around, you will easily be able to find another developer who is familiar with your system and available to work at a reasonable price.
My site is running on a CMS, but I don’t know how to use it!
No matter what CMS you decide to use or how well it is set up, there is going to be a learning curve for you to learn the ins and outs of the system. There is a tradeoff here between having more control over your content and how difficult it is to edit your content. If your site has some fairly unique layouts with many different sections on a page that require editing, this adds more layers of complexity to the CMS. On the flip side, the fewer areas you need to control the easier it will be for you to get setup in your CMS edit your content.
If you aren’t sure how to edit your site, get in touch with your web developer and ask them if they would have time to sit down with you for an hour and go over how to use the system or if they would have time to put together a couple screencasts of the basics of using the system. Also, if you are using a fairly common CMS, there are most likely a lot of training resources freely available on the internet that you should definitely check out.
It’s not the tool that matters
There are lots of great CMSs available, and most of them have very similar capabilities. What is really important is how familiar you are with your system. It’s much better to spend time learning how to use a system than debating which one is best for your site. You’ll often here people say that it is not a matter of what tool you use, but the final product that matters. You can probably achieve the same result a thousand different ways, but the final product is what people care about.
This is the first post in a new “Mailbag” series. This series will be driven by the questions that we receive from our clients and readers so please feel free to contact us if you have any questions you would like answered!
