CMS - The choice is yours
Nearly a fortnight ago, the Perseverance rover made its historic landing on Mars. Preceded by Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity and Matt Damon, Perseverance is the latest NASA rover to land on the Red Planet and will spend the next two years searching for signs of ancient life. Among other things, Perseverance can navigate, drill, listen, measure, fire a ray gun and fly a helicopter. It even takes selfies and operates its own Twitter account. Anyone else feeling the need for caffeine? Ok, Perseverance doesn’t do everything itself, it has a huge team of scientists behind it. We all need a little help sometimes. Especially in business.
If you’re an individual or small company, regularly updating the content of your website may not feel like a priority, but it’s important. A well-updated website is brilliant for both SEO and clients alike, so how do you successfully achieve this with limited resources and a long to-do list? The answer is choosing the right developer to manage your content for you from a choice of solutions.
While most websites are created and updated using programming languages called HTML and CSS, a web designer will work directly with this code, whereas the less technically minded may make use of a content management system (CMS) with WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editing capabilities. This is software designed to make building, maintaining and updating a website easier, with less need for coding. It sounds simple, but there are drawbacks.
Before you decide whether you’d prefer to use a web designer or a choice of CMS to update the content of your site yourself, there are a few things worth considering.
Firstly, your skill level. Any CMS will require a learning curve initially and then a certain degree of coding afterwards. If that’s something you’re comfortable with then go for a CMS you can manage yourself. If not, utilising and working with a web designer like us will save you a lot of hassle and potentially costly mistakes.
Next up, time. Running your own company can be all-consuming so decide if you have enough time to devote to your site. If you do, using your own CMS could work. Otherwise, let us take the pressure off.
SEO, or Search Engine Optimisation is another major consideration when updating content. Many CMS have a built-in level of SEO awareness, or will work with a plug-in which can sometimes be expensive and cause their own issues – but that’s another story. SEO is complicated though and to do it right, you’ll need to be confident resizing images and working with metadata, sitemaps, links and URLs. As website designers with over 13 years of experience, we are experts at SEO. If it doesn’t come as naturally to you, editing your own CMS could hold you back.
Also, the likelihood is that most of the pages on your website will remain static but devoting one to regular updates like news or blog articles can really help your business and your search engine ranking. We offer the ability to update your own content in this way using a variety of content management options, because we want the best for your company too.
Finally, security and cost. Regular security updates are essential for a CMS and the potential business cost of these, along with other plug-ins can add up. Especially if any of them should go wrong. We don’t work for free either, but your money is hard-earned, so spend it well.
Whether you prefer to use preWeb IT Solutions, edit your own CMS or a combination to update content, we’ll work with you to find the best bespoke package for your business.
Don’t let managing your website content feel like operating Perseverance singlehanded, say hello to see how we can help you make the right choice.