CMS is an acronym for Content Management System. A Content Management System does what one would guess, it allows users to manage content. What one may not have guessed is that a CMS operates, for the most part, with a visual interface. In other words, “everyday” users have the ability to manage the CMS, with little to no programming skills, using point-and-click methods. These point-and-click methods amount to the users completing forms; creating titles, uploading images, assigning the location where the content will be displayed and saving the content. The idea is that a site owner or their staff has the ability to update the content of a website without hiring a programmer every time such changes are needed.
Content Management Systems (CMS) are wildly popular for the flexibility they provide. Even better, most of the popular CMS are free to use. Furthermore, each has a process by which to extend their functionality by incorporating modules, plugins, components or themes.
Drupal, Wordpress, Joomla and Magento are among the most widely available and widely used CMS. Which one is right for you? We have built many, many sites on each of these platforms. Our experience dates to their earliest versions. ByteCom Software understands Content Management Systems, we know the benefits and pitfalls of each and we know which will be best suited for your objectives.
Here’s a list of some brands that rely on CMS:
- Drupal: Pfizer, The Grammy’s, Entertainment Weekly, The Economist, Princess Cruises, NCAA, Red Hat Linux, Timex, Greenpeace, Fox, BBC.
- Wordpress: Target, Rolling Stone Magazine, Vogue, World Climate Forum, The White House, Angry Birds, The Walt Disney Company.
- Joomla: IKEA, Linux, Dollar Rent-a-Car, Holiday Inn, Hyundai, The Hill, Harvard College, ProVideoShow, Jennypop.
- Magento: Helly Hanson, Ford, Vizio, Landrover, Nestle Nespresso
To illustrate the concept of a CMS, let’s imagine a scenario with Ed, the fictional owner of a hotel. Ed knows that any successful hotel needs a website. However, the budget for Ed’s Hotel isn’t sufficient to have a fulltime webmaster to constantly manage his site. Ed hires ByteCom Software to install and configure a Drupal CMS.
The Drupal CMS features a front-end, the public facing display of eds-hotel.com, as well as, an administrative back-end that operates in a web browser.
After consulting Ed, ByteCom Software collects a series of free-to-use tools that are important for the functionality needed to manage his business. Every hotel needs a reservation booking system and we select one of the available booking modules and an image gallery module, a newsletter module, a social media module, a credit card processing module and a graphic theme for the hotel’s site.
Once the CMS is installed and configured, Ed takes over the Admin user role. Ed’s website has now become an integral business tool that he uses on a daily basis to promote his business on social media, book reservations, accept the payments of guests, manage the newsletter, automate email communications and keep the front page fresh and interesting. Ed also has the ability to assign certain permissions to certain users. This allows some users access to sensitive areas of the CMS and restricts access from others. Ed doesn’t want the housekeeping department to have access to the credit card processing of guest payments so he restricts access to that data with ease.
Ed does a brisk business during his first summer and guests are eager to buy merchandise online from the gift shop. This makes Ed anxious as his CMS website doesn’t have a shopping cart. Ed calls ByteCom Software and is pleased to discover there is a shopping cart plugin for his Drupal CMS! Ed’s Hotel now has a dynamic business tool that is an integral component of the business’ success. To make the situation even better for Ed, he knows his Drupal CMS website is capable of expanding to suit his needs. What might Ed be able to do with his CMS in the future? The possibilities are limited only to Ed’s imagination; employees’ timeclock, supply tracking, guest texting (sms), instant messaging, push notifications and much, much more are possible.
As a business owner or decision maker, you may have put yourself in Ed’s shoes and imagined how his hypothetical scenario is similar to your real life situation but not precisely the same. As longtime veterans of the CMS landscape ByteCom Software has the experience and the skills to advise you on an affordable CMS solution that you will be able manage daily and that will allow for future expansion without busting the budget.
Contact ByteCom Software today for a free consultation about your business needs and potential CMS solutions.