In this post, I’m going to be honest with you: odds are, you’re not a developer, so you probably shouldn’t be attempting to develop on your business page. Don’t get me wrong, web development is a skill that anyone is far better with than without; however, that being said, one’s page established for their place of business is definitely not the best place to learn. If you aren’t quite sure what you’re doing when shifting items and content around in HTML, you run a very high risk of permanently altering the format of your page. Even if you do know what you are doing when working with code, it may not always be worth the hassle to have to navigate through line after line just to find where one picture has been marked up. So how do you know if you need one?
Static or Current?
One of the big questions that you have to ask yourself is how much your content rotates. Do you have new content on a daily or weekly basis, or is your site used as a reference with typically unchanging content? If you aren’t going to be updating your site on a regular basis and don’t need to manage any other sort of data feed on the site, there’s not much of a need to install one as the installation of a CMS is too time intensive and laboring to justify it. On the other hand, if you have a constant rotation of material, you can cut your maintenance time down to as high as a quarter of your original.
DIY or Professional?
There is also the possibility that you may not want to learn all of this either: just because you want to be directly involved in the updating of your page doesn’t mean it’s a skill set that you absolutely have to learn. You can always opt to acquire the services of a maintenance professional to do your updates for you. The price of this service, however, can still hinge on the time needed to perform the tasks. If there is no CMS, then the price of performing the updates is still impacted by the time spent by the web professional to acclimate his or herself to the backend of your website.
Is Functionality an Issue?
Suppose that you have a site with static content and do not require a content management system for frequent updates: do you still require functionality and plug ins to ensure an easy user experience? What was once hours upon hours to install items such as a video gallery, blog or lead generating forms is now as simple as a 5 minute drop-in item. Also, with template generation, the following hours of design integration can be automated with the click of a mouse.
It goes without saying that any newly created website should come with a CMS and the websites from E-Moxie are no exception. There are several different options for management systems for different programming languages, but since E-moxie mostly works in the PHP language, we use our in house CMS called Drive. If you are struggling to keep your website up to date, come see what we can do for you!