Content Management Software (CMS):
Updating your Website
Using Drupal or Joomla or Custom CMS
Research shows that visitors are more likely to return to your website if it is updated frequently. They want to see new services, helpful tips, learn of new employees, see interactive elements etc. But with limits on your time and staff's knowledge of web design - how can you maintain your website in a cost-effective basis while retaining control over content? Website maintenance is no easy task.
At Lenox Web Design, we make it easy to update your website. We will be glad to perform updates on your website on an as needed basis or as part of a site maintenance contract.
Lenox Web Design offer a range of maintenance options from open-source Content Management Software to custom CMS solutions. We can also guide you to free open-source editing tools to maintain your site. This method provides easy, low cost maintenance. You can edit text, add photos, etc, but you may not be able to add/delete pages.
If you don't want or need to maintain the site yourself, we provide maintenance and updates on an hourly basis.
If you are interested in a full CMS solution, Lenox Web Design can design your web site using either Drupal or Joomla, the two leading open-source CMS solutions on the market. Both have advantages and disadvantages and which one is right for you depends upon the application. In either case, they provide for very easy maintenance and updating from any computer anywhere. All you need to do is to go your website and log on as the administrator. Then you can create content, edit content, add pages and delete pages at will. You can even add photos, illustrations and Flash to your site. You can provide for different levels of access control so that you can designate different people in your organization to be able to update and change only certain pages. You can create/edit links to internal pages and to external websites. And you don't need any technical skills or learn any complicated software. When you make the changes online, the changes take effect instantly.
There are some disadvantages of the Drupal or Joomla CMS systems however.
- If you want a custom design, it is often harder and more expensive to provide a full custom design, due to the template nature of Drupal and Joomla.
A custom-designed CMS system, however, will allow us to provide a full custom designed web site AND provide content management for the pages that you want to update. We set up these pages as dynamic pages using PHP and MySQL. This allows you to have full editorial control over the pages you need to control but still offer a full custom design. This is the best of both worlds.
In all cases, if you make changes with the CMS, you need to make sure that you have a back-up in case you want to restore the page. Actually this needs to be the rule in all web sites. Make sure you back up the site on a regular basis. It is not good to depend on your web host provider. They may say they back up on a regular basis, but this is not always the case. Be sure - backup your web site!
