Successful Website Development:
Using a Content Management System for Public Websites

by Joe Adkins, Web Designer

In recent years, an increasing number of businesses and government agencies have been looking beyond the standard static website to deliver their public face to the world. Their information is changing rapidly and they need a way to deliver fresh content to their audiences quickly.

Imagine your audience visiting your website to see an attractive, consistently formatted series of web pages. They are mesmerized by the simplicity and effectiveness of the site. Behind the scenes, a solidly constructed web infrastructure and sound procedural process is making sure that the latest content they view is delivered to them quickly and effectively. You are thinking it would be great if the person writing a news article had the ability to post it directly to the website without having any technical “know-how”. If that article could just always be in the same standardized format as the other content on the site and linked from several locations throughout.

This can be accomplished with a web Content Management System (CMS). But first, it’s going to take some careful discovery and planning.

What is a Web Content Management System?
A web CMS is software that automates the creation and organization of web content. The software provides tools where users with little or no knowledge of programming languages and markup languages (such as Java or HTML) can create and manage formatted content with ease. This ease allows for important updates such as press releases to be created, reviewed, and posted almost immediately.

One of the advantages in using a CMS is that all the content will be presented in a consistent format. You can create global templates for a variety of content types such as press releases, program overviews, data sets, and news articles. If you ever want to change the look and feel of your site, you can change a global template and automatically render a new appearance to all your content.

In most modern CMSs, your content is stored in a relational database such as Microsoft SQL or Oracle, enabling you to extract and present it in a number of different ways. You may identify content that can be shared with an enterprise intranet website in the future. The same CMS could be used to deliver multiple websites which may even share common content. All websites within the CMS are able to leverage a common web infrastructure, design assets, and content assets or they can stand alone.

Most CMSs provide a mechanism to define your content workflow and approval process. This aspect is highly beneficial on a public website where content must be verified for appropriateness and accuracy before being shared with the world. The CMS can be integrated with email so an individual on the workflow cycle can automatically approve a change, be notified of tasks, or pass on information. You can even set content to be posted automatically at a certain date and time.

What’s the Catch?
The decision to employ a content management system can’t be taken lightly. Implementing an effective CMS takes careful planning. The best CMS on the market will not work if there is not a clearly defined workflow and process in place and clearly defined roles and rules for creating and approving content. If one of these areas is not well defined, all your hard work will be in vain.

How Do I Start?
To select the software most appropriate for your organization, you have to do some research. Some systems perform very advanced functions (which can be difficult to implement) while others are simpler, easier to implement and more appropriate for a smaller organization. The system you decide to use should be capable of expanding to accommodate any future change you anticipate. The size of your organization may not be the key factor, the needs of your website and your resources to maintain it, may be.

When ActioNet is tasked with redesigning a website or implementing new technologies for website delivery, we understand that there is a base set of requirements already defined. In order to finalize these, we meet with the subject matter experts and determine what content they want to share with their audiences. You have to discover what you have, what you need, and what you can leverage. It is also important to identify who will take ownership of the content, who has authority to change and review it, and any existing business processes that will impact your plan.

Planning for the Future
Much like building a house, you don’t want it to ever fall down. Leave the content managers with a solid foundation (procedures and logical infrastructure) and the walls of your house will stand the test of time. Your website will be maintained just as easily next year as it is upon delivery. The benefit then transfers to the end user with a consistent and frequently updated website.

A CMS is a very powerful tool to help you deliver an effective website when considered carefully, implemented with strong procedures, and maintained for the long-term.