Our primary audience is the small business, but anyone with a website should find this look into web management quite helpful. First, and to be redundant, if you don’t have ready and easy access to the content on your website, it’s time to upgrade! It’s that simple. Technology has progressed and the ability to edit web pages without technical skills now exists—at an affordable price.

If you’re paying someone else, an html developer perhaps, to update your content, then a CMS will quickly pay for itself. Or maybe you’re simply at the mercy of someone with technical skills to update content. No matter. Consider the opportunity cost, which for a small business translates to real money, real quick—sometimes before the close of business.

Fundamentals
Content Management Systems (CMS) are the website platforms that allow for end-user administration and automated content organization. A website built on a CMS can be edited by someone without web programming skills.

There are countless content management systems out there, each with there own merit as well as limitations. CMS functionality can be custom built into a website or provided through the integration of a CMS software application. Per software, both server-side and client-side applications exist. Server-side software reside entirely on the server and is accessed via a web browser. Client-side is accessed via workstation-based software.

Our CMS of choice for standard websites is the Adobe Contribute platform. Contribute is a workstation (PC or Mac) software application that incorporates hypertext transfer protocol (HTTP) for Internet browsing and file transfer protocol (FTP) for file uploading.

The two standout features of Contribute are 1) breadth of design freedom and 2) ease of page editing.

  1. With the CMS functionality built into the software application and not into server page structure itself, the developer is offered design freedoms that are either unavailable or costly to achieve in other content management systems. Consequently, page code can be kept clean and light for fast loading and cross-browser compatibility. [Note: Adobe Dreamweaver is used by the site developer and Adobe Contribute is used by the “contributor” or client.
  2. Contribute initialy operates like a browser to navigate, then functions much like Microsoft Word to edit a web page. This WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) functionality incorporates easy to identify icons and menu options that virtually everyone understands and have become accustom to. The process from start to finish: browse the website, make the changes, and click Publish.

ADVANTAGES of Contribute are numerous:

  • Developed by Adobe Systems, Inc., the software is well-built and continually upgraded, more than justifying the $169 one-time software license fee
  • Creating and saving drafts prior to publishing is a feature that many people find indispensable
  • Permissions enable administrators to define who can edit and publish content on a website or within a specific web page.

Whether you opt to go with Contribute or another CMS, we recommend making the move. Not until you’ve actually taken control of the content on your website, will you realize that you’ve been sitting in the passenger seat this whole time. Take the wheel with a CMS and see what your website can really do for your business.

Applied Web Vitals is a web design and development company. Please feel free to contact us to explore your next design, redesign or site enhancement project.