What is a CMS? A content management system is a piece of software that allows you to edit content on your website without having any web design skills.

In first instance, a web designer creates a series of CMS templates which your pages are dropped into. You then use a simple interface to add, edit or delete content on your pages. You can also quickly and easily create new pages yourself.

Why do I need one? There are obvious benefits to installing a CMS. Your website need not change in style at all: it can simply be re-created in CMS. You can then update it yourself as often as you like, without need to call a web design company and pay for changes each time.

If you update your website on a regular basis, and do not currently use a CMS, you could save a lot of time and money by implementing one. If you do not yet have a website and are about to have one developed, you should think very carefully about what you will be using it for. To stay competitive in this day and age, websites need to be far more than a static brochure. If you think you will be updating your content more than a couple of times each month, creating your website using a CMS is highly recommended.

If you do not update your website at all, you should be asking yourself whether you ought to start. If your customers see same thing each time they visit your website, they will quickly stop visiting. A CMS will allow you to quickly and easily transform your website into an interesting and dynamic marketing tool.

In last few years, options for small businesses to get a site developed have changed dramatically. There are now sophisticated “site builder” tools available to small business owners, bundled with many web hosting packages. By using templates, and a content management system to manage updates to site, it became easier to set up and maintain a web site, and many development companies have canned this functionality, for a fee. Hosting providers are increasingly offering tools to automate web site building process, and with good reason. This new option has many benefits, as long as business owner recognizes that there are trade offs and limitations to getting a web site this way.

One of biggest attractions for site building tools is cost. It won’t necessarily cost less to get your site this way, but it does provide a way to spread cost over time. It still costs money - for example, you can pay $50 per month for next two years, or $1,200. But this cost very often includes hosting, and a domain name, along with a lot of features which would cost more individually, so it really can save money. For a small business wanting ecommerce, it can be even more attractive because to have a custom built, full featured e-commerce site can easily cost thousands of dollars.

For “do it yourselfer,” site building tools are a boon because they make web site building seem so easy – just click here, enter that, and voila – you have a web site. At least, that is perception! Of course, professional web designers know there are a few more things to know, but we do find some irony in fact that web developers, in their quest to improve and better web, have made themselves optional. Most site building tools today are very robust, making it simple to add forms, searching, maps, guest books, calendars, and a whole variety of elements to a web site. Even better, hosting company sometimes offers an entire suite of services – site builder, email marketing, search engine optimization and statistics, all in one package along with hosting.