By Paul Provost
Founder of 6P MarketingMany companies originally set up their websites as a means to advertise and promote their products or services. These Brochure Sites are static, online versions of the company’s new business presentation – an online brochure.
More recently, websites like eBay, blogs, and social networking sites like Facebook and LinkedIn increased the demand from organizations, who are usually not computer literate, to build dynamic websites with content that they could quickly and easily update with new information and features.
A Content Management System (CMS) can significantly reduce website implementation and design costs, while greatly facilitating the ability to manage content within the site. By using a CMS you can significantly improve the tactical agility of your online business functions. The ease with which you can create new pages also gives you the unique opportunity to create custom pages tailored to specific groups, for one-off targeted campaigns.
HTML was developed as the standard page formatting language of the Internet. It originated from a complex markup language used in the printing industry. In order to make web page designs more interesting, additional languages and features such as JavaScript, PHP, Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and many others were added to work with along with HTML pages. These additional languages, while enhancing the viewer’s experience, significantly increased the complexity of the code and required specialists (coders/programmers) to build and update sites.
The average business person has little time to develop expertise in any of these languages, and as such must rely on the services of one or more highly skilled website programmers. HTML sites that are written from scratch are typically more expensive and take more time to update or change without a solid understanding of the code behind the pages. Moreover, each page is independent of one another and changes often require updates to multiple if not all pages.
While HTML coding can be made easier with programs like Dreamweaver or Frontpage, the operator must still be well-versed in web programming to use these code generators effectively.
Is there a problem with a static HTML solution?
Yes and No.
If the content of the site does not need regular updates, an HTML site is an equally viable solution.
If the content of the site needs regular updates, a CMS site is a faster, easier and more viable solution. If you are familiar with MS Word, able to update a blog or social site like LinkedIn, you can update a CMS site yourself. Best of all, content changes can be made from any computer, anywhere, anytime, as long as you have a web browser and an Internet connection.
This means that there is no need to hire, call, or pay for a web programmer to make website changes for you.
HTML Websites
Pros
+ Full creative flexibility
+ See all code in one page
+ Thousands of templates to choose from
+ Code and design-view content editors
Cons
- Speed of change to content/page elements
- Bigger risk of “breaking” the entire page
- Knowledge of HTML language required
|
CMS Websites
Pros
+ Speed of change to content/page elements
+ Ease of e-marketing/database integration
+ Open source and web-based
+ Thousands of templates to choose from
+ Code and design-view content editors
+ Base knowledge of word processing required
Cons
- Open source and web-based
- Increased backend complexity |
Revising an article in HTML
|
Revising an article in CMS
|
Web Strategy
