In the past, maintaining a website meant having to create pages in HTML using a “tool” or even a text editor. In addition, if you wanted more than just simple content, you needed to write code and create or edit images. Then there were issues with different browsers looking differently. It was a lot of work and not only did it require specialized knowledge but it took time away from other more enjoyable and important work. The result was that most people chose to not have a website, made do with what they could do or hired someone to create the website for them. All of these represent missed opportunities as the websites were not necessarily professional looking or were not continually updated to reflect new information and keep the consumer engaged.

Today there is an increasingly popular trend toward Content Management Systems (CMS). Content Management Systems are being used by more and more sites for the simple reason they make it easy to maintain a consistent, professional website. This site is managed with a CMS (WordPress) as are sites like the Wall Street Journal (wsj.com) and parts of CNN’s site (cnn.com).

These tools are not only inexpensive and easy to use but offer professional looking sites. In addition, many offer “extensions” for just about anything that you would like to add to your site. For example, the weather and news on the right hand side of this site are “plugins” that were dragged and dropped to organize them. The same is true of the links on the left. The process of adding the weather and news (two separate plugins) was less than five minutes. There are literally thousands of extensions to meet just about every need and desire.

At first a CMS may seem daunting but there is lots of help available. There are professionals who specialize in helping companies setup and customize CMS. In addition, there is plenty of help on the web for people that want to do it themselves. It is also important to note that there are hosting providers (bluehost.com is one example) that provide a point and click installation and setup for popular CMS tools like WordPress.

It only takes a few minutes to setup a WordPress based site and then as much time as you want to spend finding a “theme” which determines the look and feel of the site. You can change themes as often as you like and all of your content will continue to be presented in a consistent manner. In addition, you can add various extensions for news, weather, or whatever you like and they are also displayed properly with different themes. Thus, you can keep your site fresh with minimal effort.

So what are you waiting for? Make your life easier and your site more useful to your customers and friends. We are available to help so please email us if you have questions or would like to speak with us about making your site easier to manage.