A way in which to take control of and evolve your website.
A content management system allows you to login and make changes to your website using an online interface rather than managing all your web-pages off-line in a package such as Dreamweaver or Fireworks. One of the key attractions of managing a website in this way, is that once the website is set up, anyone with permission to do so can make changes and additions to the website’s content. This means that those without web-design knowledge don’t have to pay a web-designer to change a page, add images / video or add new pages – as it is so easy and quick to do it yourself.
Content-managed websites have been around for a while now, but the online applications available that provide this service have become more slick and easy to use, whilst generating standards compliant websites (meaning your site should be coded in a way that’s accessible to all browsers and operating systems).
I mainly use WordPress because I find it is easy and intuitive to use the online interface and my clients find it simple to pick up. If you can write a document in MS Word, for example, you can edit a page in WordPress. WordPress was initially set up as a blogging tool, but has evolved into a very powerful and effective content management system.
A content managed site is generally built around a database, which can be easily backed-up and updated.
WordPress uses Themes to modify the appearance of a site. When I design a website I’ll build a custom theme which will work as a template throughout the website. Each theme can, if required, contain different page templates that change the layout slightly for when you need to display different types of information.
The way in which content management systems such as WordPress call on a sequence of common files for function, style and appearance to build pages dynamically, means that your pages will be consistent and load quickly.
