What is a CMS?
A content management system or CMS is an application used for managing the content of a website, a good CMS provides easy to use tools for non technical users to create, update, delete and publish any content within a website such as pages, articles and blog posts.
A CMS also provides tools for administrative tasks such as managing user accounts, running email direct marketing (EDM) campaigns and accessing website sales and traffic reports.
There are two main types of CMS to choose from, either a custom built / bespoke CMS or an off-the-shelf / out-of-the-box CMS.
Custom CMS vs Off-The-Shelf CMS
There are numerous open source and commercial content management systems available for download and purchase, some examples of popular off-the-shelf CMSs are WordPress, Joomla!, Drupal, Umbraco and Kentico. When developing a new website it's tempting for many businesses to jump straight in with a well known off-the-shelf CMS such as WordPress simply because they've heard of it before and trust the name, but it's important to review your specific website requirements and pick the CMS that best suits your needs, it may be that an off-the-shelf CMS is the right choice or you could find that a custom CMS is a better fit.
Off the shelf CMSs generally offer a whole bunch of features straight out of the box and can get your website up and running quickly, this can save time up front and is great if the features are exactly what you're looking or you're happy to modify your requirements to fit in with the functionality offered by the CMS.
A custom CMS offers more flexibility than an off the shelf CMS because it's designed and developed from the ground up specifically for your business requirements and is easier to extend when you want new features or functionality added to your website, it can take a bit longer initially to setup but saves time down the road.
Content Management Systems at RVA Web Development
At RVA Web Development we have over 15 years experience developing websites with custom content management systems and off-the-shelf CMS products, we've also designed and developed the RVA Web Development CMS, a custom CMS product for the business marketing industry that powers numerous business websites in both Richmond and elsewhere.
Managing your website content should be easy, not many people have the time to spend hours or days learning a complicated new piece of software to manage their website. With that in mind we develop CMSs that are extremely quick to learn and easy to use, our custom CMSs in particular are so intuitive that our clients are usually up and running in a matter of minutes after logging in for the first time.
We design our custom CMSs to exactly reflect your website content so it's easy to find anything you're looking for and quickly make changes, the content is also structured into separate fields so you never have to worry about formatting headings, aligning sections within a page or any other web design related tasks, you can focus on writing the content you know and let the system take care of styling and keeping the design consistent throughout your website.
See some examples of our work.
