HOW TO CHOOSE A CMS (PART 1)

Even before knowing the different types of CMS, you need to determine your needs. It is also important to know your web skills 

1. Are you a web professional or semi-pro? You don't need anyone to set up your website. Here, it is up to you to build, update your site. You should know what comes next in this article.
    
2. The Internet is unfamiliar to you, your site does not need regular modification. You should consider "time banks" or hourly work. That is to say, entrust your site entirely to an agency for small modifications (rates: between 75 and 100$ per hour).
    
3. You want to update or make changes yourself regularly. This represents the majority of companies or organizations. In this case, we will advise you to use a CMS (Content Management System) for your site.

A Content Management System (CMS) is a family of software for designing and dynamically updating websites or multimedia applications. There are three types of CMS available to companies:

• CMS Open Source
• Custom CMS
• Proprietary CMS

No matter which CMS you choose, you must have your FTP accesses (the accesses that allow you to enter the source code of the website). If the providers don't want to provide them, run away! Let's start by omitting the choice of the proprietary CMS. In this article, we will not dwell on this CMS. It has little flexibility, is very expensive in the long run and requires a great dependence on the proprietary house. Then remains the legitimate choice between an OpenSource CMS and a custom CMS.

You will have to manage your site! To do so, you will have to take care of its installation and its evolution. Open source content management systems are easy to use at first. But once inside, you need a lot of knowledge to use it properly. If you don't have anyone who is comfortable with web applications and you don't know any of these interfaces, it's going to take time and money... Time to learn how to use it and money to contact web developers to explain it to you. 

The custom CMS is a tool built for you and is personal to you. Here, it is the system that adapts to you and not the other way around. It will be dedicated only to the functionalities that you will need. Learning is fast but the assembly and installation must be done by a web developer. Here it is the customer who determines the features he needs to manage his website. He can therefore take care of all the modifications himself. Of course the CMS will have been explained to him by the web developers. All the functionalities being based on his choices, the customer will not have any difficulty to use it.

Dubuc Marketing web agency offers its custom CMS services for small and medium-sized businesses that want to take advantage of their business. Like forty other small businesses, trust us with the creation of your custom CMS. To discuss today with one of our experts, contact us !