Content Management Systems
For anyone who is unfamiliar with the term, a Content Management System, or just cms, is a piece of software that you access online to create and manage the content on your website, be it pages, blog articles, images, or video.
Nowadays, there are a bag-full of open source cms’s, meaning that the coding community have collectively contributed to the software, making it feature full, and they’re all free to install and use. Every website project we take on at Papertank is built on top of a content management system so that the client can maintain their website without relying on technical staff or incurring extra costs.
Below are some of the systems we’ve used in past projects, each with a brief overview of the main features and why it was chosen. Disagree or a fan of another system? Let us know in the comments..
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WordPress
WordPress is one of the most popular content management systems, if not the most popular, around. Some designers and developers don’t class WP as a cms, mainly because the system has more of a focus on blogging rather than managing websites with large amounts of static content and files. WP is the bones behind most of our client’s websites, including The Monkey Sanctuary, Carrie Muir Hair, and our own website and blog.
Frog CMS
Frog is a simple to use content management system that focuses in on pages rather than articles, unlike WordPress. The flexibility of the system allows various templates to be setup, for example one layout for the homepage and another for the inner pages, as well as allowing various sections of those pages to be edited. We used Frog as the basis for the MacKenzie Films HD website
Concrete5
Concrete is a fairly unique cms in that you edit everything from the page itself, as opposed to the separate administrator section that many other cms’s use. It also comes with various built-in modules such as contact forms, image galleries and video players which can be inserted into pages easily and setup fast. Concrete also allows flexible structuring of page designs, meaning one template can be made into a 1, 2 or 3 column page at the click of a button. We used Concrete5 as the cms for The Riffreshers
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We’re also beginning development on our own Papertank cms to offer our clients a bespoke solution that meets their exact needs, without limiting or constraining the design or functionality of the site.
If you’re interested in integrating a content management system into your current website or want to talk to us about a new site, please don’t hesitate to get in touch