Content Management

A content management system (CMS) is a web based application which allows users to update the content of a website without any knowledge of HTML or CSS. It heightens your company’s online potency by allowing you to control what you say, whenever you want.

The advantages of content management systems

As opposed to the traditional ‘hard coded’ approach, the use of content management systems puts you in control of website content. This usually means that you can add, edit and remove content on the site such as pages, news articles, blog content and web forms. The content that’s manageable includes imagery, text, movies, SEO meta data and files – making you ‘in charge’ of your site’s tone of voice and, importantly, search engine optimisation. Fresh content, indeed, any relevant content, will improve the SEO ranking of your site. A CMS provides you with the tools you need to make sure your site is, and remains, a success.

A full featured CMS

The system we use is bursting with the all the expected features of a modern CMS; addition, update, deletion, versioning and management of web pages, images, downloads, video and web forms. It also has a useful workflow system for interaction between the CMS users (for example an editor creates the content, sends it to a publisher, who publishes it live on your site). The system is extremely flexible and configured to your requirements so that you enjoy the functionality without massive redundancy of features (which is common with off-the-shelf systems).

Micro CMS

This covers smaller content management systems designed for allowing the update of portions of your site (like news) and also the update of existing page content. One major difference is that whereas full feature CMS systems allow the control of the site’s sitemap, a micro CMS generally does not. At Hutchhouse we offer our own micro CMS as well as being able to use 3rd party systems such as Perch.

Read more about the do’s and don’ts of content management in our blog post – Managing your CMS.