Creating and running a website requires a lot of different tasks. For example, you have to write and publish content, manage the design of your site, administer to your users, and so on. Finding a solution to help you achieve all of this can be tough.<\/p>\n
A Content Management System (CMS) is the perfect solution. As the name suggests, the primary job of a CMS is to make content management easier. However, these platforms are also capable of helping you handle practically all aspects of your site from one intuitive interface.<\/p>\n
In this post, we\u2019ll look at what a CMS is in more detail. We\u2019ll also discuss why you might choose to use one over other website publishing solutions. Let\u2019s get started!<\/p>\n
As we touched on above, websites have a number of moving parts, all of which require management. Some of this involves managing the various users on your site, but the majority of your tasks will likely be related to content and design.<\/p>\n
A CMS can help you with this work, since it provides a fully-featured platform for creating content, publishing it online, and managing it. All of this can be done through an interface that doesn\u2019t require you to have much technical know-how.<\/p>\n
At the same time, you\u2019ll find that many CMSs provide a developer-friendly structure under the hood. This means that if you do have coding experience, you can easily mold them to meet your exact needs.<\/p>\n
For many website owners, a CMS is central to their daily workflows. As such, choosing the right platform<\/a> is a primary consideration. We\u2019ll discuss the specific features you\u2019ll want to look for shortly, but for now let\u2019s focus on the benefits of using a CMS in general.<\/p>\n For example, using a CMS can help you become more efficient. Many platforms offer design templates that can provide the right \u2018look\u2019 for your site with little effort on your part. You\u2019ll also get access to handy content creation tools, as well as features that help you handle Search Engine Optimization (SEO)<\/a> and other vital tasks.<\/p>\n In our opinion, practically every website owner with an eye towards creating regular content will find a CMS incredibly valuable. That content might be a simple blog, or a content marketing strategy that\u2019s part of a complex sales funnel.<\/p>\n In addition, if you\u2019re dealing with non-technical users but require consistency in design and formatting, a quality CMS is almost a necessity. There are few solutions that are this helpful when managing teams of writers or other contributors.<\/p>\n When it comes to actually choosing a CMS, you\u2019ll want to look for one that offers all the functionality you\u2019ll need. What follows are the key features that any quality CMS should provide (although you may have additional requirements beyond these basics).<\/p>\n As we\u2019ve discussed, a CMS is ideal for content management. By extension, it\u2019s also useful if you need multiple editors to process all that content. This is because you can permit as many users as you like to access your dashboard and work within it.<\/p>\n If you have multiple users on your site, you\u2019ll also need access to user role and management<\/a> features. These enable you to give each user a specific level of permissions, so no one can access functionality they don\u2019t need to use.<\/p>\n Broadly speaking, a website can be broken down into two aspects \u2013 functionality and design. Many CMSs provide access to tools that can help you modify both.<\/p>\n Often, this includes themes<\/a> or templates that help you change your site\u2019s layout and style dramatically. As such, you can make your site look practically any way you want. Many themes also include lots of customization options out of the box, meaning that you can create a compelling design without any coding knowledge at all.<\/p>\n No matter which CMS you use, user and website security are crucial considerations. Halting malicious intent should be one of your primary goals, especially if you collect sensitive information. As such, many CMSs work very hard to ensure the core code base is safe<\/a> out of the box.<\/p>\n Ultimately, having a fundamentally stable and secure platform will benefit everyone on both the front and back ends. What\u2019s more, a quality CMS will work with web hosts and developers to offer further security enhancements \u2013 which is good news for both you and your users.<\/p>\n The final key feature of a CMS relates to how changes are made on a global scale. Quite often, custom templates are used to provide all your site\u2019s pages with a similar structure. In the case of WordPress<\/a>, for example, these templates contain reusable code that pulls assets and information from a central database.<\/p>\n Of course, this provides an inherent benefit to efficiency, as you\u2019ll often only need to add data once for it to be used across your site. What\u2019s more, further global options can be added if you have access to a dedicated WordPress developer.<\/p>\n If you spend any time working with software, you\u2019ll often come across some confusing terms that on the surface seem like they mean the same thing. The word \u201cframework\u201d is often used to describe a CMS, for example, but there are inherent differences between the two.<\/p>\n As we\u2019ve explained, a CMS is a platform that enables you to create online content. On the other hand, a framework can be two distinct (yet related) things. In a general sense, the term describes a code base on which any application can be built. Frameworks power many (arguably most) of the apps and sites you come across.<\/p>\n You may also hear certain CMS themes referred to as frameworks (such as Genesis<\/a>). This is a theme that serves as a foundation, and is designed with the assumption that further development under the hood will be necessary. As such, there\u2019s a coding structure in place that\u2019s designed to be developer-friendly. However, this isn\u2019t the same thing as a full CMS platform.<\/p>\n If you\u2019ve decided to try a CMS for yourself, there are many different platforms<\/a> to choose from. You\u2019ll see from even a cursory glance at usage statistics that WordPress is far and away the most popular solution.<\/p>\n That\u2019s because WordPress is inherently flexible enough to power everything from small blogs to enterprise-level sites. Of course, this doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s going to be right in every situation. We\u2019ve looked at a number of the most popular options in the past, and compared them directly to WordPress. For example, we\u2019ve showcased Drupal<\/a>, Joomla<\/a>!, and the eCommerce alternative Magento<\/a>. Our advice is to weigh up all of your options, and compare each CMS carefully before committing to one.<\/p>\n WP Engine<\/a> is a leading hosting provider built only for WordPress, and we\u2019re proud of that fact! Central to our approach is our award-winning customer support team, and our comprehensive Resource Center<\/a> which is full of articles to help you run a WordPress website optimally.<\/p>\n To find out more, we encourage you to check out how managed hosting for WordPress<\/a> can make running a website easier, and then take a look at our reasonably-priced plans<\/a>!<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Creating and running a website requires a lot of different tasks. For example, you have to write and publish content, manage the design of your site, administer to your users, and so on. Finding a solution to help you achieve all of this can be tough. A Content Management System (CMS) is the perfect solution. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":21,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"mediapress_draft_name":"","_mediapress_is_draft_copy":false,"footnotes":""},"audience":[],"blog-category":[121],"buyer-stage":[],"company-and-culture":[],"content-type":[54],"location":[],"persona":[109],"product":[],"topic":[99],"use-cases":[],"class_list":["post-4368","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","blog-category-best-practices","content-type-blog","persona-owner","topic-cms"],"time_to_read":7,"acf":{"hero_image_alt_text":"","display_author_bio":false,"featured_on_hub_page":false,"featured_on_tag_page":false,"featured_on_category_page":false,"wp_engine_pick":false,"taxonomy_selector":{"":null,"taxonomy-audience":false,"taxonomy-buyer-stage":false,"taxonomy-company-and-culture":false,"taxonomy-content-type":[54],"taxonomy-location":false,"taxonomy-persona":[109],"taxonomy-product":false,"taxonomy-topic":[99],"taxonomy-use-cases":false}},"yoast_head":"\nFeatures of a Content Management System<\/h2>\n
Multiple Editors<\/h3>\n
Themes<\/h3>\n
Security<\/h3>\n
Global Changes<\/h3>\n
CMS vs Framework<\/h3>\n
Choosing the Right CMS<\/h2>\n
\nThere\u2019s also a personal and subjective element to choosing a CMS, based on your budget and needs.<\/p>\nMaking the Most of WordPress CMS<\/h2>\n