You’ve asked for a new website to be built and someone has thrown “CMS” in an email, or someone you know says that you have to have a CMS – But why? What is it? And is it something that’s needed? The short answer is yes, absolutely.
CMS means Content Management System
CMS is an acronym standing for Content Management System. So, the next question is what is a content management system and why is it so essential to my website? Can I just not use one? Of course, but there’s a catch.
There are broadly two types of web content, static and dynamic. Static (sometimes called fixed or hard coded) content in the loosest sense of the word means having to have someone code the changes no matter how small to every page. This can be incredibly quick, cheap and easy if you know how to code but that’s where the problem starts. If you need to manage multiple content streams or regularly update content on your site this can become inefficient. Dynamic content is input into a database, and the site uses this with web templates to create the end page. The plus side of this is you only need to be concerned about what you want to say, once it’s saved there’s no coding involved.
How is this relevant to a CMS? Simply put a CMS allows you to upload your content and allows for the dynamic content method. A CMS is an easy to use interface that allows you to upload text, images and everything else without having to code every page.
What CMS should I use?
There are many Content Management Systems on the market, by far the most popular (and Fresh01’s favourite) is WordPress. WordPress is an open source CMS that anyone can use for any purpose. It allows for an incredible number of customisations and has thousands of themes available both free and premium.
WordPress being has a constant stream of updates to keep things secure and modern – all for free! Once you install WordPress on your server, picked your theme, you’re ready to make your site your own. If you’ve commissioned a custom website to be built that’s great, WordPress is still the tool for the job. WordPress is ready for custom themes and plugins to extend its functionality.
Great! I want a WordPress website
Since you’ve found this page we guess you are in the process of looking at a new website and since your looking into this why don’t you drop us a line! We’d be happy to see if we can help you and give your site a face lift. As a full-service agency, we don’t have to stop there, if you need some marketing materials to promote your site or even a new logo – Let us know!
