What do you want from your website?
No, really. Do you want an online brochure that presents your company and its services? Are you more interested in featuring current news and events? Are you planning to frequently update your content? Perhaps most importantly, do you have the necessary skills?
Many people would say that a website should include a Content Management System (CMS). These websites can have all the latest features, blogs, RSS feeds, etc plus an administration console where a site administrator can edit or add content to the site. Sounds great, doesn’t it? No HTML or coding knowledge required! With one of these sites you can do your own updates and there’s no need to go back to your designer or web developer everytime you want to change something.
However it pays to be careful. Having a database-driven website can open the door to all manner of security issues, not the least of which is having someone ‘inject’ malicious code into your database, corrupting it and allowing them administration access to your files. How would you cope if this happened? Who is responsible for backup and restoration of your data and how often is this done? What do you know about site security? If your site uses a complex CMS with lots of features, do you have the knowledge to operate it properly?
Don’t get me wrong – I’m not opposed to Content Managed websites at all. I build and administer both static-content and CMS sites and can see that CMS interfaces are a great way for site owners to maintain their own websites. But each CMS is different and they’re often a ‘one size fits all’ solution. If you stick to creating and editing text content, fine. But if you have a need that’s even slightly outside the scope of what the site is capable of, you’re stuck. Unless you can find a workaround (which usually involves a bit of old-fashioned HTML know-how).
If you’re not into constantly updating your web content and you want a stable site that can’t be compromised with the flexibility to modify pages to look the way you want them to, good ol’ HTML, with a smattering of CSS, can still be the best way to go!
Agreed. Some of them are horrendously complicated with many more features than the average user would ever need. Others are much simpler. But, to underline my comments above, security should always be a prime consideration. Whatever CMS you use, make sure you are using the latest version! Plus there are other considerations. Some of these are covered in this post.
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