How to choose the best CMS for your website?

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And so you finally decided to create your first website, but among the many CMS, you don’t know which one is right for you? Don’t worry, in this article; we’ll explain how to choose the Content Management System to use. If instead, you are here because you want to contact a webmaster, but first you want to understand how to create a website, well you are also in the right place. So let’s find out right away how to choose the right CMS for your showcase website.

Of all the technologies used on your website, one of the most important, and you need to pay more attention to, is definitely the Content Management System (CMS), or software used to have full control in managing your content. A good CMS should permit you to easily find a system and third-party updates, as well as allow timely management of the entire website without requiring any external assistance to your webmaster. Some think that once a website is put online, it does not need any maintenance, nothing more wrong.

The CMS, as well as the third-party applications installed, must be periodically updated so as to be able to make all that series of system improvements (such as design or security bug fixes) or additional features not present in older versions. The use of a CMS will obviously also reduce operating and development costs. On the other side, a poorly designed CMS will become one of the main sources of frustration and will need a lot of time, resources and budget to put all the content. Without the support of a CMS, you will instead have to always rely on your trusted web developer for any changes to be made to your website.

Which CMS is best for my website?

Once you have the usefulness of using a CMS for the development of a website, now let’s try to answer this question too. It may seem trivial, but often the correct answers are the simplest, the choice of the CMS best suited to you depends on your needs. Before starting a project, identify by yourself or together with your web master the features that you want your website to have (eg showcase website, blog, e-commerce site, etc.), indicate which type of CMS you want to rely on for the development of the project and finally, request a demo of the website, also in PDF format. Make sure it is easy to use and has all the features you need. There are literally hundreds of CMS available (some open-source, others with a paid license and others still specially created on request), based on the purpose, application and platform to be used.

Many corporate websites have been created using WordPress or Joomla CMS. This is because many companies, even those of a certain level of business, do not need to have to request huge amounts of customization or data management, especially for showcase websites. On the other hand, the situation changes considerably if the company in question deals with e-commerce, here other better-performing software is preferred or created specifically for the development of online sales platforms. This type of CMS will not be treated in this article to avoid creating more confusion.

Benefits of a customized CMS

There are many content management systems, but no single CMS is suitable for all websites. In fact, you may get the impression that there is not a single system that does everything necessary. If your website requires a large amount of customized features, a custom-designed CMS can be the answer. With a customized CMS, you can create your website based on the specific requirements of your business. Custom CMS solutions are generally designed to be highly flexible, offer integration with third-party applications, and can better adapt to the advanced features of the website.

For obvious reasons, a customized CMS has much higher development costs than a pre-packaged one because the developer, together with his team, must provide for the design of its structure, the writing of the code necessary to allow you to have the required functionality and the graphic aspect. Often, this type of CMS is required by fairly structured companies that need advanced data management as well as customized for their business.

  • Automation level: does the CMS offer sufficient automation to simplify updates? For example, does it automatically update links to newly uploaded or updated content, create image thumbnails, or convert uploaded content to the appropriate format? A poorly designed CMS can lead to repetitive work and duplicate content. Instead, a good CMS must make each update fast and simple.
  • Navigation and link management: does it automatically support updating links between pages and all forms of navigation on the website?
  • Support Documents and Multimedia: Can you upload documents and files of specific formats, embed video and audio from external websites? Can you write and publish text files (articles, news, descriptions) independently?
  • Resource management: Does the CMS have a central library to store and reuse images, documents, and so on?
  • SEO Friendly: How SEO friendly is the CMS? Automatically create URLs optimized for search engines?
  • Editorial review and approval: can you have an editorial review procedure, in which a user prepares an article to be published, and another user reviews it before publication?
  • Authorized access: can you assign privileges and user roles, allowing users to have predefined access levels?
  • Multilingual support: does the CMS include support for translating the website into multiple languages ​​and allows users to choose a language of their choice?

As you can see, to design a good CMS, you need a lot of design work as well as a continuous revision. The open-source CMS are the most used ones for this reason. They offer the possibility of being able to customize almost all the most common projects based on user needs. They offer you a constant system update as well as the wide availability of user guides or troubleshooting communities.

In conclusion, to choose the best CMS for your website, determine what you need and based on this, it evaluates the CMS that allows you to satisfy your needs fully.

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