Content Management Systems: An Outline

Back in the good old days, websites were built using a bunch of HTML code that created the page. Each page had it’s own set of code, and if updates were needed, the code had to be edited manually. This quickly became complex and cumbersome, and you need a fair amount of technical knowledge to do it well. Not good for the man in the street!

These days, things are a whole lot easier. Now, we have Content Management Systems, or CMS for short. A CMS is basically the software that runs your website and makes the creation and publishing of content easy, so that even someone with little or no technical knowledge can create and develop their own website. Nice!

To go into a bit more detail, the CMS sits between a database on a web server and the users web browser. As the user interacts with the website, the CMS pulls the required information from the database and displays it in the browser. Simple really!

Editing a website or a page in a CMS can be as simple or as complex as an administrator wants, depending on the individual’s level of technical skill and comfort.

So what are the Content Management Systems of choice for Gleneden Ridge Design? Well, we use a few, depending on individual site specification and circumstance:

1. WordPress: Easy to setup and use, manageable from any computer, tablet, or phone, easily customizable, no coding required, the blog is built-in and ready-to-go, and it has tons of free plugins available in the WordPress Plugin Directory. Always a bonus!
   
2. DotNetNuke (DNN): A good choice for larger sites where multiple integrated portals are required (such as web applications or intranets), DNN has great security, speed, stability, and flexibility, with loads of premium modules available from the DNN Store, but you do sometimes need some technical knowledge to get by.
   
3. HubSpot: Not so much a CMS; more of an entire marketing solution. Hubspot is ideal for enterprise use; it has a range of payment options available, from a free (but limited) entry-level package to a full-size enterprise marketing solution, including email management, calls-to-action, web pages, landing pages, contact management, marketing lists, and file management. And there are plenty of add-ons in the HubSpot Marketplace too. It’s a monthly subscription package and lives in the cloud. As such, you have access to all of it’s core features from anywhere, you don’t have to worry about backup or security since Hubspot does all of that for you, and their technical support is second to none. You do pay for all of that, however, since it’s not cheap.

Those are the systems that we tend to use, but there are loads more out there. If there is a CMS not listed here that you’d be interested in, then let us know. If you’d like more info on any of these systems, how they are deployed, or how sites are created and managed, please contact us.

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