Is a Content Management System Right for You?

Being able to edit the your website’s content yourself is great for keeping your website current and interesting. Frequent content additions may also increase traffic to your website. If you are not comfortable working with HTML or setting up an ftp connection, there are many web applications that can make updating your website almost as easy as using a word processor.

The type of web application we are talking about is called a content management system or CMS. A CMS stores the content of the website in a database, creating the pages on the fly as they are requested by visitors. They can range in complexity from a simple blogging application such as Wordpress to powerful enterprise level solutions like Drupal. Both of these are free, open source software.

Advantages of a CMS

Built-in Text Editor

Of course, one of the main advantages of a CMS is the ability to enter text directly into your web browser and save it to a database. Some editors will also allow you to copy and paste directly from a word processor and even retain some styling information such as heading identifiers and links.

Add a Quick Post or a Whole New Page

Have a quick comment or newsflash to post on your website right away? Just log on to your website from your browser and publish it. Or, if you have a longer article that needs to be accessed often, create a new page and add a link to it in the main menu.

Making regular postings about the latest developments in your industry or field is a great way to establish yourself as a resource and attract more traffic to your website.

Interaction with Visitors

Another great feature of CMS software is allowing visitors to place comments after posts and pages. Comments allow you to interact directly with site visitors in a public forum. This not only helps establish your website as a hub of information, but also builds community.

Plugins

Plugins are software modules that extend the functionality of the CMS. There are freely available plugins for Wordpress and Drupal to do everything from creating an events calendar to conducting a poll or survey to adding video to your website. If you plan to make use of many features like these, a CMS may lead to considerable development cost savings.

Templates

There are many design templates already available, many are free. Of course, you don’t want your website to look just like everybody else’s. With a few changes to the color scheme, fonts, borders, and some new images, you can have a unique design that represents your individual business.

Advantages of a Static File Website

Static files means that the pages on a website are not constructed from a content database, but are contained in separate files on the web server file system. There is no application to install and maintain and no database to set up. The website is therefore much simpler to maintain.

Costs

For smaller websites that are not updated frequently, static pages will generally yield significant cost savings. The cost to build a static website is typically less if there are less than 10 to 15 pages. Because more work is required to create a static page, there is a point where a CMS will become less expensive.

Maintaining a static website requires relatively little interaction other than monitoring the server status, tracking bandwidth usage, and maintaining a backup. A CMS is a web application that must be kept up to date with security patches and periodic upgrades. Ongoing costs for a CMS may be $300 to $500 a year or more if there are a large number of plugins that must also be maintained.

Design Freedom

Having direct access to the HTML code for each page gives more flexibility in controlling the look and feel the pages on the website. Using multiple templates is easy.

Some CMS’s will support multiple templates; however, some will not and implementing them on the ones that do makes managing the application more complicated. There will also be multiple templates to modify when upgrading to a new version of the application.

Conclusion

Hopefully, this essay has given some idea of the trade offs between a simple static website and the functionality of a CMS. The choice really comes down to how you plan to use the website, the number of additional programming features needed, and how the cost of updating content on a static website compares to maintaining a CMS and its plugins.

As a compromise, Perception Web Solutions uses PHP driven templates for all of the static websites that we build. This means that the instructions for creating the layout of the pages are kept separate from the files containing the page content. This way only one or two files needs to be changed in order to change the look of a menu or give the website a complete makeover. Using this system, a website with less than 20 pages that does not require frequent updates will likely be less expensive to set up and maintain using static pages.

On the other hand, Wordpress is ideal for a website with one to a few users and can be built for not much more than a static website. With regular and relevant content updates, the interest generated by your website will likely exceed the cost of maintaining a web application.

As always, Perception Web Solutions is glad to answer any questions about which solution is best for your specific goals. Contact us for a free initial consultation.