As the saying goes on the web "Content is King." There is no argument that if you are going to
have an effective Internet presence you must have current, dynamic content that gives your
visitors reasons to come back time and again. While content may be king there seems to be little
discussion about the optimal way to manage this content for small to medium sized businesses.
Have you ever noticed that when your building the web site you have plenty of helping hands
but once the site is launched and the daily grind of support kicks in it becomes harder and
harder to find that help. This is why it is so important to evaluate your Content Management
System (CMS) for you web site in the development stages. Every web site has some form of
content management system in place, except for those that never change. The CMS can be as
informal as an email to the web developer or a multi-million dollar computer program that
warehouses data from several different databases. In focusing on small to medium sized
businesses I have decided to eliminate the big dollar systems and concentrate on the three
major types of CMS's available.

The first type of CMS is the default traditional and most widely used method I call the manual
update system. This usually requires sending the information to the web developer. The web
developer then utilizes their FTP program and HTML coding skills to make the requested
changes. The changes are then reviewed and approved by the requester. The problem with this
model is that the web developer is usually a high priced contractor and not an in-house
resource. This means that you end paying a hefty price for web site changes. The cost of web
site changes becomes a budget issue so you end up reducing the number of changes you make
to your site in turn reducing its overall value.

The second type of CMS is the WYSIWYG system. This model allows the web site owner to
use one of the graphical web development tools on the market today such as FrontPage or Net
Objects Fusion. These are great programs that allow you to make changes to the web site in a
graphical look. The changes are simple and if you configure the software correctly you can
update your web site with a few clicks of the mouse. The problem with this model is that you
become dependent on the WYSIWYG tool. If you can't get to FrontPage then you can't make
your change unless you resort back to our first model. But now it gets a little trickier. These
WYSIWYG tools create very convoluted HTML code so manual changes can become very time
consuming. Another draw-back of the model is that if your company utilizes a tool like this to
create their site they may limit themselves to the graphical templates that come with the
software. You end up getting a site that looks pretty much like everybody else's. Furthermore, I
think it is important for any company planning on building or revamping their web site to meet
with a web development company to at least review the best practices for web development.

The final type of CMS is what I like to refer to as an integrated CMS. This type of Content
Management Systems is built directly into the site during development. In order to make
changes the web owner simply enters in a secure URL, logins and makes changes to the site
without having to know any HTML or FTP commands. Changes are instant and all the user
needs is a web browser and access to the Internet. This has been a very successful model for
our company because it allows us to build web sites that empower the web owners. Web
owners can make changes to their sites as often as they like without the need for a high priced
web developer. Of course the cost of a site with an integrated CMS will be a little higher but the
overall cost of ownership of the site will be dramatically reduced over time.

Regardless of the model they choose, web site owners must acknowledge that their web site
does come with a Content Management System installed. An educated web site owner will
ensure that their site has a CMS that allows them to get the most out their web site.


About the Author
Michael Park, MBA MCP
Chief Technical Officer
4net Software, Inc.
Internet Development Solutions
http://www.4netsoftware.com
mpark@4netsoftware.com