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How will using a CMS Website Help My Business?

You can read more on the differences between a static website and a CMS here but if you've decided a CMS is a better route for you or your business, perhaps you're still wondering just what you can do with it. Below is an explanation of just some of the feature benefits you'll get from using a content management system, such as Drupal.

Content Management

A CMS is designed to allow you as the owner to manage the textual content of your site's pages often by the use of a WYSIWYG editor allowing you to write articles with a toolbar for bold text, italics, headings, and more. There is no need to understand HTML, however if you have some rudimentary knowledge of it, this can be useful but not necessary. More than just editing text, if you have images on your site such as a photo gallery or sidebar images, you will often have control over what those are, or how many in a series, etc. The possibilities are vast. Additionally, there is also the potential to add in multimedia content such as video clips, audio, attach documents to pages, and more. The whole idea is that you have control over the content. More than just content, you can have features of menu handling, showing certain menus for certain users, or have content saved in a draft state, unavailable to the public until you choose to publish it. Content, or even individual users for that matter, can be rated, have comments added on about them by other users or the public. The flexibility is astounding and opens up all kinds of possibilities.

User Management

If you have a website where you'd like to have multiple users be able to sign in and control some of the content, you can have as many as you like. The Drupal CMS is built with community in mind and websites like PureWebMedia's Granville Island website, is home to over 100 market vendors, each with their own page to show content. You can set up users to have varying levels of permissions, allowing you to specify which content is available for editing to a particular user. If you have members which belong to a particular role, you can set certain content on the site to only show up for them and not others. CMS's allow for a high degree of flexibility depending on the platform used, such as Drupal.

Flexible Design

The Drupal CMS features a high degree of control over design visibility, known as a theme. Themes can be developed to appear in almost any way that the client desires. PureWebMedia's approach to this is that the design should be unique yet practical. Establish an identity, have the site fit into your current color scheme or logo design. It is even possible to develop multiple themes which the user can switch between according to their preferences. In the hands of a capable Drupal themer, almost anything is possible!

Organization

Most sophisticated CMS websites come with tools to help you search, organize and categorize content through use of advanced searching tools, taxonomy applications, custom lists, linked content and more. A CMS is built with the potential for hosting an ever expanding amount of content and somehow, that needs to be organized. This is where a CMS really shines because the entire structure is built with this expansion and categorization in mind.

Extensibility

A robust CMS is one which can extend beyond its default capabilities. This can be achieved by the use of plugins or modules which are libraries of code developed to fill a certain niche and perform certain tasks. This is one of the most powerful and alluring features of the Drupal CMS and an aspect that makes working with it so interesting. With the list of features expanding every day, it's very likely there will be a module to fit your needs and if not, often one can be custom made for your purposes. Additionally, a cms loans itself well to being scalable and future-proof, meaning as your needs expand, a CMS can usually move and develop with those needs. If you need a complete redesign or branding / identity change for your site, you can have this done without affecting all the content that you've written, ultimately saving you in countless hours of work.

Search Engine Optimization Friendliness

A powerful CMS is one that will allow you to control many of the aspects that drive successful SEO, an absolute necessity for any business which wants to be found easily in the search engines. With the Drupal CMS, you will be able to have control over meta tags, title tags, sitemaps, tie into Google Analytics to examine and improve your site's demographic and effectiveness with search engines. Give meaningful names to your URLs, control attributes of images, take control of metadata, microformats and overall semantics to give your content meaning through descriptions. This is one of key tools and advantages of going with a content management system.

Who Uses Drupal?

Drupal is the content management system of choice for many, and just a short list of its adopters include: ...and many, many more.

Conclusion

To sum it all up, controlling content is key to search engine optimization which in turn is key to being found on the web. Using a CMS website is one of the best means to manage your website's content. Managed properly, the rewards will become apparent from the beginning. Even if you are not in business on the web but you simply want control over your website's content, including images, media, articles, pages, etc then a content management system is your wisest choice. Please contact us for more information on having a Drupal CMS website built for you!