More than 68 million websites are built on content management systems (CMS). That’s an impressive number, right?
WordPress, Wix, Joomla, Drupal, Magento are among the most popular CMS to build websites with fewer resources and limited technical knowledge. In addition, they help organize, maintain and create digital content across platforms. But this is just the tip of the iceberg, there are many CMS available in the market today and each has its place under the sun.
This article covers some of the key drivers in identifying the right CMS for your business. Some drivers that we cover include content type, volume, CMS architecture, technology, cost, and use case.
But, why does your business need one?
Along with being a great tool to build websites with fewer resources and limited technical knowledge, let’s understand how a content management system impacts your set-up process, team productivity, and online reach.
1. Excel with limited coding know-how
Long gone are the days of depending on developers and designers to establish a strong digital presence for your business. Now users can create and manage content, customize the website design, and add functionality using extensions to your site—all without knowing how to code!
As a result, users with limited technical resources and time can still build a powerful digital presence for their business.
2. Advanced security
CMS platforms offer built-in features and add-ons to secure your website. In fact, some of them come with a dedicated security team, application firewalls and SSL certificates, and other advanced features.
3. Enhanced Cosmetics of website
Almost every CMS comes with a variety of pre-designed templates and themes to customize the cosmetics of your website and in turn, the user experience ultimately.
Moreover, they offer responsive templates to ensure your site looks good on every device.
4. Content scheduling
Content scheduling is an essential part of the overall content strategy for any organization. Without a CMS content scheduling would require users to know coding and other technical tools.
A CMS allows you to schedule blog posts, emails, landing pages, and more.
5. Easy access
With a CMS in place, users can access and edit your content from any device virtually with a stable Internet connection. It eliminates the inconvenience of building your website from scratch on a device that should always be connected to a server.
However, choosing the right CMS for your business might be tricky and requires a decent understanding of the types of content management systems available in the market.
CMS can be categorized based on content type and architecture.
Let us understand how CMS differs based on various content types:
>Component Content Management System (CCMS)
Instead of managing content page by page, a component content management system or CCMS organizes content at a granular level—by creating a central repository of photos, images, and content.
Configured for maximum content reuse, CCMS stores these components only once.
>Document Management System (DMS)
Tracking vital content and business files on paper is a thing of the past. A document management system or DMS offers a paperless solution to upload, process, and share documents on the cloud without any printing or scanning hassle.
>Enterprise Content Management System (ECMS)
An enterprise content management system or ECMS gathers, manages, and delivers critical business information to the right stakeholder—employees, business partners, customers, etc.
An ECMS gives easy access to all stakeholders of an organization of the information they need to complete critical tasks and make important decisions.
>Digital Asset Management Systems (DAMS)
With digital asset management or DAM in place, users can access digital content via a centralized library. These assets can include videos, images, text files, and presentations. Moreover, DAMS are cloud-based and are accessible from anywhere and on any device.
>Web Content Management System (WCMS)
A web CMS or WCMS is a content management system that lets you build web pages with personalized design and content. A WCMS saves time and streamlines workflow management by publishing content automatically.
Now let’s unpack the various architectures of a CMS. There are three broad categories of CMS architecture, namely, conventional or traditional, headless, and hybrid or decoupled CMS.
What is a conventional CMS?
A conventional CMS or traditional CMS like WordPress is a monolith system that connects the front end and the back end of a website.
It is a tightly coupled CMS architecture with a fixed template-based structure and predefined tech stack.
When to use a conventional or traditional CMS?
While it is better to move towards a headless CMS, it is not always possible to implement given the status-quo of your organization. A traditional CMS is recommended when your business has:
> Simpler Websites
Traditional CMS is used for simpler websites like personal blogs and sites and is not technology-dependent to build products.
> Fewer resources
When you don’t have content creators or developers, you can rely on a traditional CMS to do the job for you just perfectly.
> Web-based content
Traditional or coupled CMS is used when customers target web-based content majorly.
> Complete control
Choose a traditional CMS when users want to regulate the process from creation to content display fully without the help of a developer.
If you are exploring a content management system, you probably would’ve heard about a headless content management system or headless CMS.
What is a headless content management system?
The above concepts depict conventional content management systems where everything worked in siloes with monolithic and tightly coupled solutions. A headless content management system decouples content from the front-end delivery layer. It implies that the system has no template or editor but only text and APIs to deliver your content on various devices. Hence, the name “headless”—because your content can have any “head” you like since there is no predefined structure in place.
The only loophole a headless CMS has is that marketers are left in the cloud, and front-end developers are responsible for designing and organizing the content framework. So the content display conveys the right message across platforms—website, apps, wearable, and voice-enabled devices.
The role of marketing in headless CMS is restricted since there are no editor or drag and drop interfaces available.
When to use headless CMS?
> Better user experience
Headless CMS acts as a repository to structure content for connected experiences, particularly beneficial for e-commerce companies.
> Scalability
Headless CMS separates front-end from back-end and hence, allows for teams to work independently while scaling.
> Reusability
Headless CMS comes in handy when users want to reuse the content.
How is it different from conventional CMS?
A traditional CMS enables you to store the content in a database and a structured frontend to present it. The most popular example of a conventional CMS is WordPress CMS, where structure comes in themes and pages.
On the other hand, a headless CMS gives users a limited dashboard to create and present content instead of depending on predefined themes and structure.
When to use traditional CMS?
While it is better to move towards a headless CMS, it is not always possible to implement given the status-quo of your organization. A traditional CMS is recommended when your business has:
> Simpler Websites
Traditional CMS is used for simpler websites like personal blogs and sites and is not technology-dependent to build products.
> Fewer resources
When you don’t have content creators or developers, you can rely on a traditional CMS to do the job for you just perfectly.
> Web-based content
Traditional or coupled CMS is used when customers target web-based content majorly.
> Complete control
Choose a traditional CMS when users want to regulate the process from creation to content display fully.
What is a hybrid/ decoupled content management system?
For quite a long time, headless CMS was the world’s answer to a growing number of avenues and screens flooding the market—it made sense to decouple the content from the frontend delivery layer for seamless distribution of content. However, because of the pressure, it exerted on marketers to work closely with frontend developers, there was a need for a hybrid system as an antidote.
It offers the flexibility of headless content management systems with omnichannel content delivery and enables you to integrate with one or more suite solutions without depending on IT Solutions. Additionally, and perhaps, more importantly — a hybrid CMS addresses the issue of content authoring.
What does Hybrid/ decoupled CMS offer?
Along with providing flexibility, hybrid CMS also maintains the ease of use for marketers. So let us look at other features to look forward to with Hybrid CMS.
> Decoupled Architecture:
There is a strict separation between content and presentation layer. However, the authoring experience includes WYSIWYG (What you see is what you get) and inline editing, which can be leveraged by marketing and non-technical users.
> Open Source Software:
With open source software, every user can innovate, eliminate the “vendor lock,” and enjoy the autonomy to integrate with new technologies and service providers.
> API-Driven:
Robust APIs allow seamless integration and blending of technologies; it does away with the rip and replace strategy and helps leverage investment in legacy applications.
> Containerization:
Being adopted by giants like Amazon and Netflix, containers and microservices are gaining slow traction in the digital spectrum. A hybrid CMS uses similar technologies such as Docker4 and Kubernetes to optimize DevOps and infrastructure utilization.
When to choose a hybrid CMS?
A hybrid CMS is a must if you want to build lightning-fast, no-code experiences for your users. It offers:
> Omnichannel delivery:
You can distribute content using APIs via different channels and use the front-end code and templates for standard web delivery.
> Reliability:
A hybrid CMS allows users to scale and avoid database bottlenecks making it more reliable than other types of content management systems.
> Security:
A hybrid CMS helps users be more diligent and increase security compared to other CMSes.
> Performance:
A hybrid CMS helps users access better performance by removing CMS application overhead on every server improving content delivery speed.
Conclusion:
Hybrid CMS starts where every CMS should—looking at the customers’ needs. Next, it focuses on marketers, developers, and other stakeholders to boost customer experience. However, based on individual business needs and objectives, the right type of CMS differs for different organizations.
You can explore more about the content management systems by connecting with our experts. Copper Mobile’s future-proof solutions boost rapid growth for your business.
