Friday, June 25, 2010

Web design warning signs: #4 - No Content Management System

A Content Management System, or “CMS” as it is frequently called in the industry, is crucial to effective ongoing management of your Web site. In its most simple format, a CMS allows you or members of you team to add and modify content and page layout on the fly. Without a CMS, you’ll need to hire a designer or pay a development firm to make minor changes – a hassle of coordination and often a deterrent to updating your site as often as you should – or at all. In addition, it’s nearly impossible to implement SEO best practices for even a smaller site without a CMS.

Luckily, there are a number of free content management systems out there that do a great job running simple sites. Check out Joomla or Drupal or just do a search on Google for “Content Management Systems”. Even blogging software like WordPress can serve as decent CMS for a simple site. If your Web design firm doesn’t bring up content management in your first meeting, run for the hills.

Here are a couple of reference links:

Read the full series: Top 10 Web Design Warning Signs

1 comments:

Greg Friese, MS, NRP said...

You might be under estimating the power of WordPress and Blogger as CMS tools. WordPress's easy ability to add pages turns it into an excellent CMS tool. And Blogger seems to be doing pretty well for this site.

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