Choosing a Content Management System (CMS) for your web solution can be a simple process when you understand the needs of your business. This article discusses how the CMS needs change as a small business grows over time. Your small business has a small group of web site administrators that manage their web site. In this case, the core features of CMS are the primary concern.
CMS Core Features
- A great HTML editor that encapsulates complex HTML for you
- Browser based editing in your office, at home, or on the road
- Helps enforce a consistent style and layout on all pages
- Enables creativity in authoring appealing content for your audience
You'll want to upload new images, media files and documents to keep your site current and fresh using your online tools. Uploading files to your web server one at a time is fine for just a small number, but you'll want the flexibility to ship a compact disc containing many images to your hosting provider, some may be very large, such as streaming video files.
Consistently Professional
Applying a consistent style can be tricky at best, without the essentials. Viewing a site with widely varying and unprofessional styles tells your customers that your business is exactly that. When you edit an existing page or create a completely new page in your CMS, you'll need to have your customize style guide at your finger tips. You'll want to highlight your content, and select a text style from the list in the HTML editor. This list will show all of the styles that have been designed for your site. You'll need other great features like tables that help align your content and spell checking.
As your business grows, the tasks become more specialized. Grant staff with the most direct connections to customer insight the permission to update the site. The CMS tools must help them do this efficiently and under a consistent style. In order to leverage their knowledge wisely, implement these features:
CMS Iteration Features
- A unique login for all CMS users
- Subject matter experts should update the web site pages directly
- Utilize versioning - make multiple versions of a single web page and publish one version after an informal review process
The burden is now removed from the owner or the few web site administrators that had modified the site in the past. Each round of editing will take the form of a new version of an existing page. This allows for review before publishing to your live web site. Inconsistent styles and unprofessional pages can be greatly reduced by employing a CMS versioning feature.
CMS Workflow Features When your business is large enough and it is no longer efficient to have management directly editing the web site, CMS should employ a workflow system . The staff surrounding your experts creates new versions of pages within an "author" role. Management will now perform an "editor" role and serve as final reviewer before publishing pages to the web site.
An example scenario:
An entry level marketing employee creates a new version of a page, and appends the list of product conventions your company plans to attend this year. He clicks a button that notifies his manager the page is ready for review.
The manager logs into the CMS and previews the page where she notices an omitted city. She clicks a button to reject this version and types a small note in the description field.
This cycle can repeat until the page is fit for publishing. Now, the manager clicks the button to publish this version of the page to the live web site. At this point, the new version is instantly available to your web site visitors and your CMS is helping your company operate efficiently and use your staffing resources wisely.
CMS Solution Selection
Now that you understand the features required at each stage of your business, its time to identify a solution. Pop Art has helped companies in each of these situations plan and implement the right CMS solution for their needs. CMS can be an empowering tool for your business that presents the right message to your targeted customers.
Pop Art has developed Catabolt TM as a modular web site content management tool built in C# on the Microsoft .Net Framework. Anyone with knowledge of Microsoft .Net programming can extend or modify this solution. The complexity of this utility can be raised and lowered to meet your specific needs. It includes a great HTML editor, layout and style assistance, versioning and workflow.
Catabolt TM is built from the ground up on the Microsoft .Net Framework and Microsoft SQL Server. Catabolt TM integrates world class components such as the Telerik r.a.d. Editor. These are the same technologies that the top businesses use to compete on a daily basis. Catabolt TM is targeted to place the features of more expensive solutions within reach of our long term clients. In the fulfillment of this need, Pop Art continues to evolve this product to meet the changing requirements of its clients through its award winning design team and its expert professional software development staff. |