CMS Platforms

First, evaluate your potential integration, goals for website growth, and what features you are seeking from a CMS. Multiple team members may want to use the CMS to do their jobs, and they’ll have different demands. IT will want to make sure their tools work with the CMS and the same for writers and marketers. You need to meet everyone’s demands, so that they can use the same system.

Also, know how much you content you want to make available on a website. The more content you have to post and archive, the more scalability you need for the future. If you know your website plan and layout, that can inform how much digital architecture you need to support content updates. You most likely are wanting a CMS that doesn’t require constant supervision from a developer.

It depends on the services that you want. You need a host and a domain name, and a website builder. The host gives you server space to create a website, a domain name tells the Internet who you are, and a website builder refines your design and manages plugins. You can all get them free.

For a simple blog to post entries and look nice, platforms like WordPress offer free domain names and hosting that you can use, with preset design templates. These are good for when you are starting out or have no budget whatsoever. If you want to upgrade, paying for a custom domain name and monthly web hosting can lead to costs between 100 and 120 dollars per year. If you want to pay for a web developer to design your site and maintain it, they may charge up to 100 dollars an hour for work. Know your budget and the features you want.

Yes and no. If you’re a very small website, you can get away without a developer unless you are seeking custom work or the CMS available cannot satisfy your needs. A CMS is meant to be an alternative for a developer so that you don’t need custom work and can update serial content regularly. With that said, if the templates for these available ones aren’t sufficient, you may want a developer to create the structure.

CMS is essentially a skyscraper for your website; you can keep adding to it, but there is the risk of one changing messing with the structural integrity. It’s a structure in place that reduces the human need to approve ample content posing, especially when working on high volumes. If you need to constantly change the structure to adapt, then you should get a developer.

First, find a CMS that can meet yours and your team member’s expectations. Whoever needs to use the system needs to be able to do their work. That means that the CMS must be able to handle functions requested and have a relatively small learning curve, depending on your team’s skill set.

What are your priorities, once you get the learning curve and expectations down? You want a CMS that can provide structure. Do you also want more revision over its code and setup, that will maintain overall integrity? Some CMS allow for these changes, but not all do. Do you want to edit users’ abilities and functions depending on their job? Or are you planning to expand your content capacity? If your answers to these questions are yes, then they should factor into your decision.