The Benefits of Using a CMS

Why do I need to know the benefits?

Most website owners realise that using a CMS can be beneficial to their website but very few know what these benefits actually are. Knowing the specific benefits offered by a CMS can help you to better decide which is most suitable for your website. Understanding these benefits will also help you to better understand the reviews in our reviews section.

What are the benefits?

Each CMS has a unique combination of benefits but we can still compare them by using the following bullet points as criteria.

• How much time will it save me? The main purpose of a CMS is to save you time when updating content - the most important time saving feature offered by a CMS is a visual text editor. With this visual text editor it's possible to write your blog post like in the most common word processor.
• Does it have good Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)? Some CMS give far higher search engine rankings than websites using a different CMS - this depends on how good the SEO of the CMS is. This is an important point to consider when choosing a CMS but you can only analyse the SEO of a CMS through much research on the search engines themselves and the CMS source code - luckily we have done that research for you and have included a SEO title in each review in our reviews section.
• Does it have good security? Nobody wants to have their website hacked so having a secure CMS is a must. To check how secure a certain CMS is you should just search Google for a term such as "Wordpress Exploits" - this search came up with over a million results but most exploits were at least a few months old, the exploits are released quite infrequently so if you keep up with the latest patches you should be fine.
• How much user submitted content is available? CMS themes, skins and plugins can add an array of extra features or improve the design of your CMS within minutes - and most themes, skins and plugins are developed by the users themselves. The amount of user submitted content available for a CMS is directly related to its popularity. If you go to the homepage of your chosen CMS you will most likely see a link to themes, skins and plugins. If you log into the Themes Menu (item "Presentaion") from your Wordpress blog you can see how easy it is to completely change the design of your CMS. One great example of a plugin is an adsense integrator - you can monetise your CMS within minutes.
• Can visitors interact with the CMS? Giving your visitors the ability to comment on your content can make them more interested and more likely to return to your website - luckily, most CMS do offer this feature. To see an example of user comments, take a look at this Wordpress blog (again?!).

What do I do now?

Now that you know what to analyse when choosing a CMS you should go out and do just that! You could start your search in our reviews section or with a Google search.

Good luck.