If you’re looking for a new website for your business, organisation or just as a project, you may want to consider a content management system.
In years gone by, websites were often built in a program such as Dreamweaver in HTML – creating websites in this way is outdated and actually limits the room you have for upgrades and features, not to mention the process of editing the content and design. In more recent times, the adoption of content management system websites has become more widespread, and it’s something Cosmic practices with clients.
What is a content management system?
A content management system (also commonly referred to as a ‘CMS’) is a computer application that allows publishing, editing and modifying content, organizing, deleting as well as maintenance from a central interface. Such systems of content management provide procedures to manage workflow in a collaborative environment.
In simpler terms, using a content management system for your website enables you to modify all content from one central location, rather than having to edit individual files like you would have had to using a HTML website with Dreamweaver.
This can be extremely helpful for a multitude of reasons. One is that it saves a large amount of time as you simply edit a page and press save. All changes are instant, so there is no need to wait to upload new files like you would have had to in the past. This also applies to editing areas that are common throughout the website, such as menus and footers. In older websites, if you wanted to change a menu link or your address in the footer, you would have to make the change on every single file/page, which could be a very tedious and monotonous task if you have a website with a lot of content. Now, this is all managed from one, central area and the changes are applied throughout the website with the click of a mouse.
Designs
Designs are now greatly improved with the assistance of content management systems – websites look modern and are also much easier to alter and amend than in the past. The addition of responsive templates is also a huge benefit and a great reason to have a content management system website. Using a CMS gives you much more room to use high quality visuals to your advantage much more easily.
Cosmic’s use of content management systems
Cosmic uses content management systems on a daily basis, both for customers and ourselves. Some popular CMS’ that Cosmic uses are Drupal, CMS Made Simple and WordPress.
Drupal is typically used for high-end, e-commerce websites that require extensive development to reach an end product.
CMS Made Simple is often used for most standard websites that Cosmic develops – it holds the ability to create pages, post news and events and much more.
WordPress is typically a blogging platform, and was used by more than 23.1% of the top 10 million websites as of August 2013. WordPress is the most popular blogging system in use on the internet, at more than 60 million websites.
Get in touch
If you’d like to know more about content management systems and how one could benefit you, please contact Cosmic’s web team on 0845 094 6108, send an e-mail to info@cosmic.org.uk or even drop a tweet to @CosmicJamie!