The appeal of a Web CMS (Content Management System) ideally lies in the business objectives it is meant to fulfill. While drawing up the blueprint of a development project it would be a good thing to evaluate a CMS based on its functionalities and ease of use.A management professional would preferably want a CMS that creates a workflow and facilitates access control. Meanwhile, a developer would like a CMS to be an extensive framework that supports new modules and integrates with ease with other enterprise services.
An enterprise level CMS has become crucial to the growth of an organization today as content marketing has evolved as a pivotal element in digital marketing campaigns.The inevitable question that would follow is, “How is CMS suitable for my business?” The fact of the matter is that an Enterprise Content Management System that is entirely flexible and allows for easy customization is worth every penny invested in it.A CMS comes with a central interface that facilitates easy editing and addition of different media before the content is finally published. Meanwhile a CMS that dictates the presentation of content and puts constraints on the design ultimately results in poor accessibility and an unsavoury user experience.
Open Source Content Management Systems like Wordpress, Joomla and Drupal have found preference over a plethora of CMSes available in the market today. The open source format of these CMSes has encouraged continuous improvisations over older versions through productive support from online developer communities. Although there are a multitude of reasons to use a CMS to develop a website, let us have a look at it from a business perspective.
Facilitates Frequent Content Updates on the Web Properties
Drupal has emerged as the top choice for complex websites that require complex data management for time sensitive content. Websites with a considerably large number of web-pages need a flexible framework to ensure easy movement of content. Drupal holds an exceptional capability of tagging, categorizing and organizing content which makes finding and reusing content on a site an easy task.
An enterprise level Website may need regular updation of serial content like blog posts, podcasts, press-releases and other value adding research material like white papers and e-books. This is where a CMS comes in as it saves you some precious time that you would lose updating the web content manually. An easy to navigate administration interface makes Wordpress a favourable option for small to medium sized websites that rely more on looks than functionalities to garner traffic. Joomla on the other hand lacks the SEO capabilities to make your content more searchable and requires the services of an SEO expert for the same.
Aids in Effective Content Management & Collaboration
Prior to the introduction of a web Content Management system, the content generated for a website was vulnerable to duplication and often gave the website a cluttered look with a lot of scattered content. The introduction of a CMS has facilitated the consolidation of the content into a single repository that in turn minimizes content redundancy and makes content-sharing easier. A CMS incorporates a workflow engine which in turn facilitates a collaborative effort by multiple contributors for content creation,editing and final approval before it gets published. A WYSIWYG Editor is a core feature common to all CMSes that helps in editing content in real time. An ideal CMS must be adept in handling external assets like downloadable files and images.
A CMS minimizes the security threats that may arise due to unauthorized access to the content on a website by assigning user privileges to authorized users who can edit and share the content by logging in through unique IDs. Different privilege levels assigned to the users ensures that a person responsible for content updation does not meddle with the main code files. An ACL(Access Control List) is again a vital component of an enterprise level CMS which makes sure that a list of permissions is granted to particular users for specific pages. The ACL support for Joomla is limited which makes it unsuitable for enterprise level websites inspite of its structural stability. Whereas Drupal has various modules like Content Access, Forum Access and Image Gallery Access that use ACL effectively.
Ensures Device & Platform Compatibility for the Web Properties
As web applications are being accessed through different mobile devices, a responsive design has become more of an imperative than an option. Mobile Content Management has become pivotal to the growth of a business online as web properties are being designed with responsive features for a better user experience on mobile devices. The ease of access, navigation and readability are important features that depend on a responsive web design that responds to a browser of any width to make the website accessible on any device.Drupal CMS is not just a content management framework as it doubles up as a web application framework too. Drupal is used as a framework to develop a variety of web apps today.
Effortless Customization Options at your Fingertips
The structural flexibility of a CMS architecture is a key element that determines the kind of features and functionalities that can be added to it. An easily customizable CMS must also possess an element of intuitiveness that makes navigation aand workflow easier even for a newbie. Drupal comes across as a highly configurable CMS that makes it easier for designers to come up with highly interactive and user friendly websites. The Drupal themes can be configured and customized with ease to make it accessible to the end user as well as the site-builders during the website development phase.
Wordpress too has a significant number of plug-ins and themes that make it a highly customizable CMS software for Designer Websites. Although the requirement of significant server resources to keep up with the future growth phase limits the scope of Wordpress as a customizable CMS. Drupal on the other hand is a champion in key areas such as performance and scalability as it comes equipped with a strong taxonomy and capabilities of tagging, categorizing and organizing complex content.
Web Experience Management
The task of engaging visitors at your website is equally significant as the marketing efforts that are put in to generate the traffic and direct them to the site in the first place. WEM (Web Experience Management) also known as WCM (Web Content Management) is an emerging personalization methodology that creates better user engagement on your website through a variety of tools that help in segmenting content and creating customized advertisements on web pages.
The WEM Module by Drupal CMS provides a range of functionalities like Event tracking, reporting and segmentation. Event tracking is a tool meant to track the user behaviour for your web pages, indicated by page views, logins and new user accounts. While the segmentation tool helps you segment your users based on the events they participate in, the reporting page helps you in monitoring the events on your website. This module can be a useful tool to analyze the performance of an online marketing campaign as it helps in tracking the user behaviour in real time.
Your choice of CMS must be reflective of the requirements of your business, which means it should not be short on features and neither should it go overboard with functionalities which might never come in handy. Although a CMS is prone to cyber-threats like hacking, the extensive support from the online developer community helps to plug-in the loop-holes and vulnerabilities through new security updates to future-proof and secure the websites.
A futuristic vision of how a CMS would accommodate your evolving business needs may serve as a criterion for selecting a scalable CMS for your web properties. We at ValueBound would like to contribute to your business initiatives through our enterprise Drupal web solutions. For more information Contact us
