Content Management Systems - CMS Web Design

We build custom CMS websites using various open source CMS platforms including Joomla, Wordpress and Drupal. CMS based websites can be created with templates or with custom designs. Pricing will vary based on site requirements and the amount of customization and modules used. In some cases they are the best choice for a client. In many cases they are not.

If showing up on search engines is not important and you want to make daily or weekly changes to several pages on your web site, CMS is definitely the way to go.

*Many of our customers have found it more beneficial to rank better on the google search engine than to have a website built with CMS.

Advantages of CMS for a Website Design

CMS provides non technical end users with the following advantages:

• Easy to keep content updated after learning the admin panel
• Perfect solution for large amounts of content with several people publishing to a single web site
• Ideal for sites with several pages of constantly changing content
• For developers, CMS web sites created with templates are fast to create
• There are several modules available to add extra functionality
• Ideal for blogs, forums or e-commerce type of applications

CMS example in Drupal

Disadvantages of CMS for Business Web Sites

Unfortunately, content management systems use databases for their contents. This results in the following issues:

• More expensive to have set up and maintained on line
• little flexibility in design layout compared to custom HTML
• Slower loading and bandwidth heavy
• Search engines have a hard time seeing the contents. CMS sites will always rank lower than HTML on search engines
• Security updates are released several times a year as CMS based sites are a primary target for hackers
• Major security updates will sometimes require all content to be re-entered
• A corrupted database requires data re-entry or data recovery
• Adding modules can sometimes cause database crashes
• Troubleshooting is complex and time intensive
• Any modification to the design or appearance is time consuming
• The database should be backed up regularly

Introducing Hybrid Web Design Options

We can also create web designs that use a combination of CMS and HTML to give you the best of both worlds. This option is more expensive but may be warranted in certain situations. We also design websites that give limited access to portions of the HTML contents directly for edits. Contact us for details