A content management systems, or CMS, is a great way to manage the content of your website, especially if you have a larger website and different people who are responsible for different parts of the website.

If you have a large website with many "static" website pages and you're tired of waiting for your IT staff or webmaster to make changes to the website, a content management system will put you in the driver's seat and make it easy for you to control your website. 

Advantages:

• Administration system for updating content without the need for HTML
• Easy to change look and feel using a few templates
• Database is used to manage text content
• Non-technical staff can create, edit, approve and approve website pages
• Control over approval of changes
• Ability to deliver different content to public and registered users

There are many different content management systems available, some of which are free, open-source applications such as Joomla! and many commercial systems such as Interspire's Website Publisher. Depending on your website requirements, Design-First will recommend the best CMS solution. 

Joomla!

Joomla has emerged in the last few years as one the most popular open-source CMS applications. Joomla! uses PHP and mySQL and is extremely versatile. It is more than simply popular—it just works well and a volunteer community keeps making it better and better.

Because it is open source, there are thousands of "extensions" or small mini-components created by individual programmers and commercial software companies, which work within the Joomla! framework to give your website many different capabilities—from social networking to ecommerce and more.

Joomal features include:

• Search by keyword and advanced search capability
• Registration system for users with different menus for different groups
• Users can be assigned editing and publishing privileges
• Entirely web-based administration system
• Uses PHP and mySQL
• Open source code
• Over 3,000 extensions to provide many exciting website features

Interspire Website Publisher

Design-First is an Interspire Partner—we have been using Interspire products for many years, and their products keep getting better. While it is a commercial product, it is affordable, a great value, and designed to integrate with other products such as Email Marketer, giving your website incredible marketing capabilities.

While the website application is not as versatile as Joomla! in terms of available extensions, it is a robust, mature, well-supported CMS product with many great built-in features.

Website Publisher Features:

• Search by keyword and advanced search capability
• Users can be assigned editing and publishing privileges
• Entirely web-based administration system
• Uses PHP and mySQL
• Search engine optimized
• Article, news and blog sytem

WordPress

WordPress is a content management system focused around blogging. Like Joomla!, it is open-source and it supports a "plugin" framework, allowing websites using WordPress to have different capabilities, based on different website requirements.

WordPress Features:

• Search by keyword and advanced search capability
• Easy to use web-based administration system
• Uses PHP and mySQL
• Search engine optimized
• Hundreds of available plugins
• Open source code

These are just three out of hundreds of CMS applications. Which one is right for you? This depends on your website goals and objectives and your budget.