First off....What is a content management system?

A content management system is the web software that lets you create a website without knowing any web programming skills or languages, such as HTML, CSS, PHP, etc.  Its essentailly the backbone of your soon-to-be new website.  Updating your website is as simple as simply pasting your post from the built in Notepad and pressing the “Publish” button.

Normally, CMSs have their own feel and fit, such as blogs (blogging software), forums (forum software) and general content management systems, such as Joomla, etc.

There are a few questions that you need to ask yourself before we get started:

Define what you need

Why you are creating a website?

• Is it for your business?
• For your hobby?
• Do you want to sell any digital or tangible stuff?

Also, you’ll need to know what all you and your visitors want to do on the website.

• Do you want to just publish articles?
• Do you want to have a blog?
• Do you want a forum?
• Any classifieds section - like craigslist?
• An online shop, or eCommerce?
• Do you want to build and inform a mailing list?

Obviously, each of the choices will place several requirements for a CMS, such as an e-commerce (online store) module, a blog, a forum, other customization stuff and more extensions, such as mailing lists and user permissions.

So, before you even start to seek a CMS, create a list of what all you and your want to do on your website. Use your imagination. How would you and your people really like to communicate and share things on a website.

Once you have identified what you want to do, you’ll need to translate the wishes to specific system features, such as basic content publishing, a blog, a forum or a shop module with additional plug-ins (many systems allow anyone contribute a plugin or a module to enhance the platform).

After you have a list of features/wishes in front of you, you can start shopping.

What to consider?

Of course, the main criterion when picking a platform for your website is what you and your people will be doing on it: writing articles, talking on a forum, posting ads/job listings, etc. However, another thing to remember include:

• how easy it is for you to use the system
• how easy it is for the people to use the website
• how accessible (to the people) and friendly (to the search engines) it is
• whether it can handle heavy load (through built-in load balancing/management/optimization), if you plan to develop a highly popular website
• if you can easily create other site sections within the system
• whether there’s significant documentation on the website
• whether there’s a forum on the main website to ask questions

This will help drive our discussions and help drive to help let us create the perfect site for you.  After all it is your site.  We are here to help you take your ideas and dreams come true!