What is a CMS
A Content Management System (CMS) is a software package especially designed to manage a website. It is set up by your web developer, but intended to be used by you.It provides you with a simple, easy to follow way of updating your website content. This is usually done via a web-based administration section on your site. It works much like a word processor does. Just type in the new content and hit save. Your website is instantly updated.
A CMS will also allow you to add new pages, delete old ones, reorder and restructure your site to suit you.
The CMS ensures that you have the same layout and appearance across the site. Menus are produced and updated automatically.
What are the benefits?
You are no longer dependent on the web designers to make changes for you.
Changes can be made any time, day, night or weekends. This is very important as you come to rely on the website as a important way of communicating with you potential customers.
All the technical details are simply handled by the CMS, allowing anyone to manage and update the site.
All staff can keep the site up to date, instead of being restricted to just one person.
You can even ensure that each staff member can only update the sections of the site they are responsible for.
The CMS ensures that all the pages are consistent in design, and will update all the menus and other navigation for you.
There are many other powerful features and add on modules that allow the site to grow with your business.
The Cost?
The good news is that a decent CMS, suitable for a modest-sized website, is not expensive. In fact there are many "Open Source" CMS products available that are free. Website Baker is the best one of these that we have found and we use it exclusively to develop all our CMS sites.