Content management systems are the backbone of websites and web applications. Millions of sites around the world rely on a content management system (CMS) to deliver the right content to the right visitors. Different teams – from development and design to marketing – rely on a CMS to help their organization reach its business goals.
Given the importance of these systems, we have a simple question to ask: Is your CMS solving problems, or causing problems?
Businesses have no shortage of software: CMS platforms, cloud hosting providers, internal business applications, and developer tools. But what is the right combination of services to support your organization as it scales?
In this post, we are going to explore three common frustrations that businesses face with their CMS and how you can solve them. Your technology stack should enable your product and marketing teams, not hold them back!
Frustration #1: Choosing the Right Content Management System
Problem
There are several viable CMS platforms – from WordPress and Joomla to Mura and Drupal. So how do you choose the right content management system for your business? And how do you ensure that your CMS can fit your needs as you continue to grow and expand?
Solution
Evaluate what core features your business relies on. For example, a blog that relies on advertising revenue has different needs than an ecommerce store that sells apparel. Although many content management systems support blogs and commerce, you need to understand the strengths and weaknesses of each system.
When Price Pottenger Nutrition Foundation came to us, they had massively outgrown their existing WordPress installation. They needed to support large content volumes and more robust e-commerce capabilities.
Based on their criteria, Tragic Media chose Drupal as the foundation and went on to build them a tailored CMS solution that was able to support their custom subscription content.
Key Takeaway
Choose the right content management system (CMS) for your needs. If you are an e-commerce store, dig into the details of customizing listings, the checkout experience, payments, integrations, and more. Just because two platforms offer commerce features does not mean that they are both well-suited for your specific needs.
Frustration #2: Architecting Your CMS the Right Way
Problem
Once you have selected the correct platform, you need to ensure that your CMS is architected correctly. This is one of the more common frustrations that we see from new clients. Many have chosen the correct platform, but the implementation is far from scalable.
Content should be easy to create, edit, review, and publish. Design changes should happen in a matter of hours and days, not weeks.
Unfortunately, many developers do not think how a website or application will change as it scales. Building a modular site structure empowers your marketing team and makes it easier to support future growth.
Solution
The specific approach required to keep your code modularized will vary from system to system. If you are building your own solution, we recommend having senior-level team members strategizing and overseeing the implementation. If your team is more junior, be sure to rely on experienced consultants to ensure your code is modular and built to scale.
Key Takeaway
Save time and money by ensuring your system is architected correctly from the beginning. We suggest creating scenarios and running through them to see if the proposed data architecture accommodates for these needs.
Frustration #3: Deploying Your Content Management System Correctly
Problem
We have also seen teams make the mistake of incorrectly deploying their CMS platform. Some companies select the wrong hosting vendor, the wrong instance size, do not use SSL certificates, or forget to use a content delivery network (CDN). These small oversights will lead to slower performance, minimize user trust, and can even cause your site to crash during peak traffic times.
Solution
Deploying your CMS requires a balance of competing forces. You need to balance developing wants and marketing wants. You also need to balance budget, performance, and availability of your site. Thankfully, Google Cloud Platform has proven to be a low-cost, scalable, and dependable solution over the years.
For most of our clients, we start them on the $30/month tier of Google Cloud Platform paired with CloudFlare’s free tier. This combination allows companies to get started with the right infrastructure at an affordable price, with the knowledge that they can scale to meet any future performance, security, or bandwidth need.
Key Takeaway
Select a reputable cloud partners from the beginning. Google Cloud Platform and CloudFlare are a proven solution that get you scalability and dependability for a very affordable price. We recommend this combination to all of our clients.
Conclusion
From the outside, it can be difficult to select and configure a CMS platform to suit your needs. We hope that these three tips guide you through your decisions. Remember that the purpose of a content management system is to help your team create, edit, and publish great content to engage, educate, and convert site visitors.
The right CMS is the one that your engineering and marketing teams feel comfortable using and investing in. Another key consideration is the ability for your content to be customized based on where your visitors are. The best modern CMS will natively support users on desktop, laptop, tablet, smartphone, smart TV, and much more!
Are you looking to learn more about the right CMS for your particular situation? Contact Tragic Media today for a free consultation. We architect, launch, and support content management systems that support hundreds of thousands of users.
