Self-Maintenance Of Your Website

This e-newsletter outlines the major aspects of what to consider prior to deciding if a content management system is required to update and maintain your website, or whether in fact, you would be best served by utilising your website designer. Essentially, this e-newletter article is looking at the pros and cons of using content management system software.

Content Management Systems

In the course of my website work, I have come across a variety of Content Management Systems (CMS). CMS are designed to enable you or your staff, to maintain your website without recourse to the website designer. Conceptually, this sounds like a great idea. Once your website has been developed, you can update it whenever you like. I have however, come across several firms who are paying for a CMS but do not use it. Consequently their website becomes dated or they pay a website designer to update the website (in effect paying twice).

It is my casual observation that if you are likely to update the contents of your website less frequently than weekly then a content management system is not for you. Nevertheless, lets explore why you might want a CMS and consider some of the aspects of maintaining your website in house using staff who are not website professionals.

A Few Questions To Be Answered

As with any potential investment you need to do your "home work". To start the "ball rolling" ask the following questions:

How frequently will the web pages be updated?
How much time will be spent updating the content?
Who will be trained to use the CMS?
Who will be the coordinator to ensure that the overall look and feel of the site's content is not compromised?
Who will look after the technical aspects of the CMS?
Will the CMS assist or hinder your rankings with the search engines and hence the ability of the website to be easily found on the Internet?
What are the costs of a CMS? What are the additional costs for the website design work?
Will hosting costs increase as a result of using a CMS?
What value is being added to the business by maintaining the website in-house?

In short, will there be a return on the investment or are you better off having your website designer updating the website's contents?

Purpose of Self Maintenance

Firms who use a content management system often do so in the belief that they will save time and money. Although time is probably not the right word rather they are prepared to pay to have full control over when an update to the website occurs. Yet very rarely, if ever, does the content of a website need to be updated immediately. And I'm sure that if that was the case your website developer would be able to accommodate the requirement.

Types of Content Management Systems

There are two types of websites static and dynamic. With a static site all the pages have a physical existence. With a dynamic website the contents of a page sit in a database and the website page is created on demand. Most small sites are static whereas most large (1000 pages or more) are database driven. Most, but not all, content management systems are designed for database websites.

You may also wish to check if the content management system software resides on your personal computer or can only be accessed via a browser. Most but not all CMS work for both Mac and Windows operating systems. Generally, browser based CMS work in all the major browsers but not always.

Levels of Functionality

Content management systems vary in terms of the content you can modify. At the very basic level your can simply replace content - replace the text, images and information within a table but not the specific location of say an image or the number of cells in the table, and few, if any enable you to optimise photographs before uploading them to the web - for that you will need specialise software (or your website designer). At the other end of the spectrum you can replace and relocate the bulk of the contents - provided you know what you are doing. And that's the rub. The greater the functionality of the website the more time is required to learn how to use the software with confidence and if you are not using the software on a regular basis...

Investment

It seems to me that there are two sets of costs to be quantified when investigating the possible use of a content management system. First, there are the internal costs. These costs may be, to some extent hidden in that you are already paying your staff. Nevertheless there is the opportunity cost. If someone in the firm is updating the website then obviously they are not doing other work. So is the value of updating greater than the value of the other work? Then of course there is the staff training (be it on the job or on a course) - as easy as the CMS maybe to use, someone has to learn how to use it; and use it with confidence.

Externally, things are a lot easier to measure: the cost of having a website built for a content management system vis-ā-vis a website that will be maintained by the web designer. Likewise with hosting costs: a dynamic website will cost more to host compared to a static website maintained by your web designer (by their nature dynamic websites are resource hungry).

A further potential cost is that of buying a content management system or renting the CMS (although there are plenty of open source or free CMS out there that even large firms use). If you buy then you need to factor in the cost of a updating the software (say every couple of years). If renting then this may be covered by the hosting fee, but you may still need to pay to have your website modified when a new (version of) browser arrives or a updated version of the personal computer operating system e.g. Windows or Mac OS is installed.

You also need to consider what happens when you decide to move to another website hosting company. Transporting a CMS based website to another hosting company and/or CMS may be 'impossible". You may, therefore, need to have a completely new website.

CMS and Search Engine Rankings

Ever seen a website page with a very weird-looking address containing characters such as "?, $, @, %, &id="? Then odds on it's from a dynamically driven website (i.e. a database is used to create the page on demand). Such websites can cause search engine spiders grief, so they avoid them like the plague. Content management systems frequently make use of databases so if you want more than your home page listed and ranked with the search engine make sure your CMS is not creating a barrier (database websites need not create barriers).

Website Audit

To my mind every website needs to be periodically reviewed in its entity particularly if it is one that is maintained by a content management system. Software does not care. It does not care if coding errors creep in (and they do). It does not care if good practice is followed, if your website is assessable to potential clients who are visually impaired (including the blind), or if your website works fine in one browser but not in another. And software is totally indifferent as to whether or not the contents of your site meets search engine "requirements" for a top ranking. A website audit is a must if you are serious about your site being readily found on the Internet and providing potential clients with a quality experience.