First of all, what is a Content Management System?

A Content Management System, or CMS for short, is an application designed to facilitate the creation and management of content.

So, do you need a CMS?

Whether or not you may need a CMS solution depends on the size of your website, the amount of traffic you receive, your skills as a webmaster, the number of users who will be adding content to the website, and many other factors.

Website Size

The content of a large website can be very difficult and tedious to maintain if a content management system is not used. Most CMS solutions will store the content in a database in an organized fashion. The administration interface of the CMS should provide an easy way to manage the content.

On the other hand, a CMS solution for a small website may be overkill. A website with a small number of pages is easy to maintain, but may need a content management system solution as it grows.

Website Traffic

The amount of traffic a website receives can be a significant factor in deciding whether or not to use a CMS. Static html pages have always been the fastest loading, whereas dynamic pages need to be compiled or pull information from a database. The processing behind these operations can add time to the loading of the page. It is important to consider the amount of processing that takes place behind the scenes in a content management system. Fortunately, there are many lightweight CMS solutions these days for high traffic websites.

Webmaster Technical Skills

A content management system can be an easy solution for a webmaster who lacks the necessary skill set to create their own website. Most CMS solutions contain a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) editor. The editor allows for the creation of website content without HTML or other website specific knowledge.

There are many templates available which can be easily installed in many content management systems. Some of these templates are free and some come with a small cost. Another solution to creating the look for your website would be to hire a website designer. This can come with a significant cost, but you'd be getting the exact look and feel you want for your website.

Website Users

In many situations, a website will have more than one content provider. In this case, it may be beneficial to consider a content management solution, as a good CMS system will have the ability check in and check out content. The purpose of check in and check out is to prevent more than one user from editing the same content at the same time. Multiple users on a static website can create many problems with content updates without the help of a CMS system.

Conclusions

There are certainly other factors to consider in whether or not to use a content management system, but hopefully the information contained above will help you in making an informed decision.

Website Accessibility means the website accessible to all the users in the web including visitors with disability. Many website owners know that their website is available in the internet for visitors to access information but possibly may not know whether their website is easily accessible and even be unaware about Disability Discrimination Act (DDA).

According to Disability Discrimination Act (DDA), all the business should make their services accessible to disabled users. There is also a section in DDA which addresses that if a business offers an online service, even the information is on a single page, then the business is responsible for making an effort to make this information accessible to disabled users.

All new websites that are designed and developed should now follow the W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) and Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) against which the accessibility of the website is measured. But when the website is found isn't complaint, then anybody can sue you legally, if they want to.

By following these guidelines, you enhance the professional look of your website, provide access to visitors who previously had not no choice, thus increasing your business prospects and finally not to forget, your business is legal.

Some basic Guidelines to increase the accessibility of the visitors

Validate HTML and CSS: To check if the HTML and CSS used is valid, W3C validator can be used. It is necessary that websites are checked as the validator automatically tells you about any errors and accessibility issues in the web pages.

Image and alternative text: For browsers which don't support images, alternative text can be used to explain what the image is about as the user will only see the text.

Resize font text: Most of the internet browsers use Internet explorer to search for information. If the size of the text can be increased by choosing the font size to the largest then it means that your website is accessible to visitors.

Use of Java script: Websites are not easily accessible when java script is disabled. Mostly people have the java script support switched off, if that's the case then make sure that you use the Java script sensibly and unnoticeably.

Check for the following,

1. Website is accessible without the use of a mouse

2. Website has a Sitemap

3. Website has link text relevant to the content (blind users use tabbing while browsing websites from one link to the other)

Not long ago, a friend of mine sent me an email asking for my opinion on whether a site he was developing should be done using Wordpress, LAMP, or ASP.NET. I've used all of those, but have always been so focused on the details and learning them that I never really thought about the great question of "What technology should be used for a given site?". That is such a good question that I decided to put my thoughts on paper and help provide some education to others.

Some people don't have the skills and ability to actually be able to choose the most appropriate technology. They know one thing and that is going to have to be made to work in all cases. That's not necessarily bad, but it's nice to be able to switch between technologies based on the type of site. The important thing to realize in web site development is that one technology does not fit all.

Wordpress

I have several web sites currently running Wordpress. I originally thought of Wordpress as just a blogging platform. While that is certainly its main use and what it is optimized for, you can definitely use it to create a more "traditional" looking web site. It is very configurable and there are tons of custom plug-ins available that can allow you to add RSS feeds, SEO tags, voting, etc. Since Wordpress is developed using PHP and MySQL, it is also possible to create your own plugins and customize your site template. Oh, and that's the other incredibly awesome thing about Wordpress -- the templates! There are literally thousands of free Wordpress templates available for download. If you can't find one that fits the theme of your site than you aren't looking hard enough.

Another nice thing about Wordpress is that you can easily find web hosting providers that support Wordpress. In most cases, you can click an install link and have Wordpress properly installed on your site in a few seconds. Then you go to the Wordpress admin console and configure your site. It is all very easy. You can upload multiple templates and easily switch between them. It is also easy to make minor changes to the templates (like changing tag lines, colors, etc.).

The other benefit of Wordpress is that it is a blogging platform and the search engines love blogs. You can configure your Wordpress install to automatically ping one or more blogging services whenever you add a new post or page. That way they know your site has changed and they should come index your site again. If you want your site to be found then using Wordpress as the underlying engine is a good option.

LAMP

In case you don't know, LAMP stands for Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP, which is a very common and powerful set of technology components used for building web sites (and did I mention completely Open Source and free!). If you want complete control over your web site, then LAMP is a good option. There are plenty of examples, free scripts, etc. available on the web site to help you get started. There are also plenty of free editors and tools to help you along. The downside of LAMP is that it is hard for you to create your own development "environment". Since most of us run some flavor of Windows as our desktop operating system, we would need to use something like VMWare or Virtual PC to create a virtual machine running Linux. The next challenge is getting all of the components properly installed. While the installers for the LAMP components have definitely improved, they still don't compare to the ease of installing a Windows-based application. The next challenge with LAMP is debugging. It would be nice if we all wrote perfect code, but the reality is you need the ability to debug. There are PHP debuggers available. A good one is going to cost you some money though.

One of the best things about LAMP is that there are TONS of web hosting providers out there for you to pick from. The reason is quite simple -- LAMP is completely open source, so it there is very little cost for the hosting company to bear. That means more margin for them!

ASP.NET

Microsoft's contribution to web site development is ASP.NET. You can use any .NET language (C#, VB.NET, Python.NET, etc.) to develop an ASP.NET based site. In my opinion, the best thing about ASP.NET is the fact you can use Microsoft Visual Studio for you development tool. Visual Studio is the best tool out there. Yes, it costs money, but you definitely get what you pay for. The other nice thing about ASP.NET is that you can easily develop on your Windows-based desktop or laptop.

It is harder to find a good ASP.NET hosting provider. Believe me, I've looked! And I've used several different ones. The ASP.NET providers lag behind the LAMP providers in terms of what they offer. You also need to be careful and really understand what the provider means by things like "host unlimited # of domains". In many cases they just mean you can have an unlimited # of domains point to your single web site. That probably isn't what you want.

I mentioned the use of Visual Studio before. That tool is awesome and makes development SOOOO much easier. I did quite a bit of development using LAMP and got some sites up and running. I used Eclipse with a PHP plug-in and it worked pretty good. I didn't have Apache running or Linux, so couldn't really debug but I still managed. When it came time to create a more advanced web site, however, I quickly decided to switch over to ASP.NET and use Visual Studio. Debugging was a snap and the coding was made much easier thanks to Intellisense and Visual Studio's ability to "import" web services and make them easier for me to call from my code.

Making the Right Choice

Each of the technology options has pros and cons. If you want to get a site up quickly and it will be displaying basic information (text, images, video) then Wordpress is a great option. If you want a more advanced web site but don't want to spend much money on development tools, then LAMP is the best choice. Finally, if you already have Visual Studio or know .NET programming, then ASP.NET is a good option. If you're really lucky and can know all three then you can use the right tool for the job no matter what.