Friday 31 July 2009

Tip 19 - Content Management Systems

When it comes to your website, we all know the best way to increase traffic and make it a better website is up to date content. In the past this has meant using your web master to update your content, which has been a time consuming task.

Thankfully gone are the days of relying on your web master to update your content thanks to a wonderful thing know as CMS or Content Management Systems. Put simply these allow the end user, in other words you to keep your website content up to date, this includes everything from the pictures to the text.

There are an adundant number of CMS around and using one does not have to cost the earth, as if you use an open source CMS option then the only cost is the implementation.

Now depending on which technology your site is based on, whether it is .Net, Php, Java there is an open source solution for you.

As I work with Microsoft Asp.Net my personal favourites are umbraco and DotNetNuke these are both Asp.Net / VB.Net based solutions and are simple to set up and use. Word of warning is that they do require some level of technical knowledge to use everyday, although if you get your web master to set them up correctly you should have no trouble using them.

There are a lot of other CMS options available, another one I quite like, although it is PHP based, is Typo3 , although it is better to use the pre built installer for Typo3, which you can find here Typo3 is a nice simple solution and again its open source so the costs are minimal.

WARNING

Althought using open source software saves on time and money, you must be away that open source means everything is available to everyone, this includes the source code. So where honest decent developers are helping develop these systems and push them forward, you also have the dishonest developers who are looking to compromise your security. So just be aware that your MUST make sure your security is tight when using open source.



Are you making the most out of your website. The answer will most definately be no. Ask for a FREE report now. Go to www.potissimus.co.uk for more info.