Pros and cons of content management systems
A Content Management System (CMS) is a program that allows you to publish, create and edit content on a website through a centralised web interface. They allow control over HTML based content, files, documents and images, without the need for advance coding skills normally associated with web development.
Advantages of using a Content Management System
The advantages are:
- Fast to update a page.
If you need to alter a page quickly, without having to go through a web developer, a CMS makes it easy to do this, by providing the content of the page in something that usually resembles a word processor allowing basic changes and formatting of text and images.
- Easy to upload new files, such as PDF documents, Word documents or add to an image library.
CMSs usually have an easy way to upload documents and to get them displayed on web pages and make it easy to link directly to them from your web pages. It's the easy way to add new, or to replace documents.
- No need to learn complex development skills.
The content of your pages are rendered how you would see them on the page and this allows for only basic skills to update or to add new pages, without having to learn HTML, the language behind web pages.
Disadvantages of a Content Management System
It is not all advantages, there are some downsides:
- Tied to a template.
Most CMSs use a template based system, this means there can be limitations to how your pages can look. Changes to these can require coding skills to update. Redesigning a website can be particularly difficult without support.
- Complex to set up.
Many CMS come pre-installed on web hosting packages, but these are usually done with the default options so anything more than a simple blogging site can be difficult to set up. Most users would require a skilled developer to set up a content management system so that they can get the most out of it.
- Ongoing maintenance must be completed.
Content Management Systems need to be maintained. All offer bug fixes, patches for security and new versions come out regularly. These need to be applied to your site but care needs to be taken to make sure your site still works after the updates, especially if there any plug-ins or customisation that has been made.
Help and support should always be considered and Corner Pocket offers a managed solution, providing support on the technical stuff so you can concentrate on just the content.