Running a website is an integral part of business, marketing and crucial for anybody looking to hold a presence in nearly any modern industry. For those who don’t know a lot about web development, keeping your website up to date isn’t an easy task. This can be problematic for those who want to frequently update their site to keep customers and users informed of anything from dates of sales and new stock to thoughts and opinions on business related developments. Updating your site used to mean sending content to your web designer who would have to rewrite your site’s HTML code to make any changes, all while charging a fee. Recognising this hassle, web developers have come up with Content Management Systems (CMS) as a graphical method to keeping your site up-to-date.

Web Content Management Systems offer more than just an easy way to update a webpage. A good CMS will also offer a range of different features that will help you improve the quality of your website and make it easier to do so.

If your website represents a group of people through business, or for any other reason, Content Management Systems will let you organise permissions for multiple users to make site changes and updates. These features become more advanced and have different uses depending on the website. Review and article heavy websites that cover a range of subjects can give contributors strict access rights to the specific parts of the site they are responsible for.

Once information has been uploaded, it can be retrieved by other users for editing or proofreading. CMS makes it incredibly easy to ensure accuracy in your website’s content. Your CMS can be configured so that, before being published, an article has to be approved by one of the site’s editors, giving you greater control over what is on your website and how it gets there.

Content virtualisation is another useful feature present in a lot of content management systems. Content virtualisation allows a user with permission to work with a virtual copy of the website, making multiple changes that can be reviewed and approved before being sent to the web server. With website design developing and evolving at the rate it is today, CMS makes it easier than ever to make large, sweeping changes to your website’s content and style.

With so many different features available that make it easy to maintain a website, having a Content Management System has become a necessity for anybody who is serious about their web presence. Stay up to date, get a better grasp on your web content and streamline your content management with a CMS.