The basic concept behind Content Management Systems is that they provide a secure environment where only the owner or employees of a particular business’ web site may login and change a potentially wide variety of information and functionality on their site.
A properly designed Content Management System (CMS) is extremely accessible. First, it does not require any additional software. Second, you can use it to administer (change) your website simply by visiting a special login page, then entering the appropriate username and password.
When properly designed, Content Management Systems are very easy to use. Many employ a friendly little text editor that loosely resembles Microsoft Word. To bold a word, for example, you simply highlight it and click the little B button.
A good Content Management System is built in such a way that a unique set of permissions is assigned to each person. So the owner of the store might be able to create other site administrators, change the pricing of items in his inventory, see who tried to log in and when appropriate, switch the entire site from using a merchant account to using PayPal.com, and so forth.
At the other end of the spectrum, the temporary worker that you hired to spend the day updating something trivial should not be entitled to the same high level administration privileges that you need. Instead, they should be limited to doing only the things that you want for them to do. A well-designed Content Management System can physically separate those various capabilities, and make certain that only the right people can access and change the appropriate types of information.
Prefabricated Content Management Systems are sometimes necessary for small companies and very limited situations where a tight budget is the primary consideration. On the whole, though, the majority of our clients strongly prefer a custom Content Management System that has been specifically designed to meet their needs over the prefabricated more cumbersome models. Using a prefabricated CMS is like buying a double-wide trailer... you’re severely limited in what it can do for you. You’re never, for example, going to be able to knock out a side wall and add on another bathroom.
A custom Content Management System, on the other hand, is the electronic equivalent of Henry Ford’s moving assembly line. It specifically evaluates each area of need and develops a solution that takes the raw material available to it and transforms it into precisely what is required at the next stage. A well-designed custom Content Management System starts at the beginning, knows where it is going, understands what is feeding into each part of the process, and perfects each sub-process so that the entire business system works together in a completely automated and comprehensive fashion.
Developing a custom Content Management System is not cheap. As you can imagine, it takes time and superior planning skills to do it right. Needless to say, it is critical that when you choose a custom Content Management System, you also choose a web development company that knows what it is doing, and then does it.
Our team specializes in the development of extremely user-friendly Content Management Systems. We routinely repurpose a great deal of code developed inhouse, giving our customers programming code that is tried and true, with the ability to have the original author modify it whenever required.
The Vital Signs Web Development team of specialists is standing by... to get started, give us a call at 877-494-3308 or drop us an email at design@vitalsignspgh.com. |
