The Benefits of a Content Management System

Posted by Matthew Butt on 27 February 2012 | 0 Comments

When building a website, a lot of attention is necessarily given to the user experience. Page layouts and content can define the success of a site. The content of a website is not static, however. Clients need a way to be able to easily manage the content of their site over time; that's where a CMS comes in.

Why use a CMS?

A CMS, or Content Management System, is a web-based way for a site administrator to handle what's displayed on their site. Based on the capabilities of the particular CMS used, the administrator can add new pages, edit existing pages, change the site map, create new web forms, polls, and surveys, and even manage file uploads on their site, all without needing to know the code behind their system.

It's certainly possible for a developer to create a custom system whereby a client can manage all of the aspects of their site that they need to. A custom solution might even seem to be ideal for most sites, since they can get exactly the capabilities and features they need, but using a pre-built CMS has several advantages. One of the biggest advantages of using an existing CMS is that it is much less error-prone than custom code. As said by Edsger Dijkstra, who made great contributions to programming throughout his life, "If debugging is the process of removing bugs, then programming must be the process of putting them in." By avoiding a lot of custom code, a developer also avoids creating a lot of new bugs.

The pre-built CMS solutions, of course, are not bug-free. They have, however, already solved most of the issues that a custom solution would need to hurdle over its development. Many of them also implement solutions to web security threats, including cross-site scripting, SQL injection, session hijacking, and cross-site request forgery, among others. These security loopholes can be incredibly time-consuming to close after code is already developed - using an existing solution not only provides peace-of-mind for knowing that these issues are solved; it saves a lot of time, too. The time saved by using an existing CMS can translate into money saved for both our developers and our clients. If our client does need some custom capabilities, most of the popular systems are still heavily customizable. In fact, for popular open-source systems, a lot of custom modules are already created and freely available for use, again saving time and money.

Which CMS should I use?

After deciding to use a CMS, the next obvious question becomes "which one?" There are a myriad of choices available, including Wordpress, Joomla, Drupal, Silverstripe, Expression Engine, and dozens of others. At Garfield Group, we remain "CMS neutral," choosing the right CMS based on our clients' needs, but recently we have been concentrating on two quite a lot: Silverstripe and Drupal. Both of these systems are open source with a PHP backend built on a MySQL database (among other possible options). They both make heavy use of page templates to define content layout, and both are customizable by the addition of modules that can either be downloaded from their respective communities or developed from scratch.

Drupal is one of the most popular content management systems in use today. It has a huge development community, so chances are if you need to do something on your website, it's already been built, tested, and used by hundreds of other people. Drupal was created to be extended, so a developer has the ability to create incredibly powerful custom modules, or even modify the behavior of existing modules, all in an organized manner. The backend interface in Drupal allows modules to be upgraded and managed seamlessly without requiring extra code or downloads - a big plus for clients managing their own sites. Content management in Drupal is based on views, blocks, and pages. Views and blocks are small bits of content that can be put into any page and reused over the whole site. They make it easy to generate and manage familiar layouts throughout a website to make the site more usable. On the other hand, finding the source of any particular piece of content can be difficult for someone who isn't already familiar with the site, since a single page can be made from many views and blocks alongside custom content.

Silverstripe is a fairly new CMS that comes from a group in New Zealand. Being new, it has a much smaller online community than Drupal does. One interesting bit about Silverstripe, though, is that in addition to the CMS, Silverstripe includes a code framework for the site development itself. With the framework, code for a Silverstripe site tends to be highly modular, easily maintained, and very consistent. The administration of Silverstripe is based on the site structure itself, with administrators putting new pages directly into the site tree and adding content to them as needed. The content management interface is also highly customizable, making Silverstripe a good tool to use when the client needs become more complex than just filling in part of a predefined layout. In addition to the displayed content, Silverstripe also includes an integrated file manager, making it easy to upload and organize any files that need to be included on your site, from images to pdfs and media files. Once a file is uploaded, it can be linked into any page just by selecting it in a GUI interface.

Having used both Silverstripe and Drupal, I'm often asked which I recommend. The short answer is it depends. Drupal is incredibly customizable, has a huge community and thousands of pre-built modules to make many common and not-so-common needs easy. Silverstripe, on the other hand, is not as popular or established, leading to the need to do more custom work as a developer. However, I find that most clients find the site-tree-based administration very easy to understand. With its ability to customize the administrative interface to exactly match client needs, I'll often default to Silverstripe unless the client wants some really advanced functionality or I already know of an existing solution in Drupal.

Whether you choose Drupal, Silverstripe, or another CMS, implementing a content management system can make it easy for you to manage your site, and can save time and money for everyone involved.

What are some of your own experiences with Content Management Systems?

Matthew Butt is a Junior Web Developer at Garfield Group. Connect with Matt on LinkedIn. Garfield Group is an agency focused on delivering measurable business results to a client roster ranging from small startups to industry powerhouses. Positioning brands for maximum growth, Garfield Group applies innovative, strategies to drive objectives and surpass expectations through branding initiatives, digital campaigns and targeted offline tactics. For more insights from Garfield Group, visit The Lab and follow up on Twitter @garfieldgroup