Content Management Systems -The future of web site design!

Although content management systems are perceived as being expensive, advances in web development have made them more accessible to all types and sizes of businesses and individuals. Although the initial outlay is higher than a static site, we firmly believe that nowadays any company serious about their website should invest in a CMS to maximise their return on the website investment.

what is content management software?

A content management system (often referred to as a CMS) is a server-based software package that enables users to manage, update and maintain their websites without the need for any specific technical knowledge. – CMS gives you, the website owner, the ability to make additional changes easily, without complex tools, and without incurring additional cost. If you need to keep your customers constantly updated with new and relevant information and don’t want to incur the cost, or wait for someone else to update your site for you, a content management system is the ideal solution for you

giving website owners control

With CMS you can update your website instantly from anywhere in the world on any PC. Make corrections and changes quickly and easily, add text, or insert pictures etc as you have 24/7 access to your site admin via a username & password. Making corrections, adding copy or files is fast and easy with a completely browser based, online WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) editing software. If you can use Microsoft Word, then you can use our online CMS and if you have the skills, you can switch to code mode, which allows you to directly edit your html code from your browser.

the technology

The software used to power our sites is the world famous, Open Source, Joomla! This software is constantly evolved by a worldwide base of developers; ourselves included. This enables the core software to be freely available to everyone to integrate into their sites.  The best analogy for Joomla! is that it is like the engine of a car. You can use that engine with its original chassis and bodywork and have a vehicle similar to many other people, or you can design and build a new chassis and bodywork to suit the exact purpose or look that is required; that is what we do. The beauty of this design is that once you want a complete change to your site, only the bodywork needs to be re-designed - everything else is held in a database and integrates with the new look. CMS takes years of man hours to develop properly; by using Joomla! you get all expertise these developers have, “off the shelf”. Examples include cross browser compatibility to increase your audience reach and search engine optimisation

the advantages

CMS allows website owners to manage their own websites via a user-friendly on-line admin section, without having to pay every time they wish to update their pages. In the long term, there are substantial savings to be made. Additionally, changes can be executed immediately. Short term and long term cost savings as website editors only need basic content editing skills and changes to the whole of the site can be made at the click of a button.

• Your company image is maintained due to predefined styles and templates being used throughout. This means you won’t have purple flashing text on your site to damage your company image!
• Complete, flexible  control -  make the changes to your site when you need to, and as frequently as you desire using a secure web based administration that can be accessed from any internet-enabled computer.
• Increased customer loyalty and retention - an up-to-date, interactive site will attract more repeat visits and encourage more input from your customer base.
• Reduced start-up costs - we offer the option of a fully managed service with no software license purchasing required, thus reducing the initial start up costs. Should you decide to leave us, all site content and design templates can be easily exported to disk as a mysql dump, so no data should be lost

hosting your site

Your site will be hosted on fast UNIX/Linux Apache business servers with a guaranteed 99.9% uptime. With 500Mb of web space and 1.5GB of monthly data transfer, your site has plenty of room for growth. 50 pop3 email addresses and auto responders are included as standard, with all emails automatically scanned for viruses on the server.

the costs

Depending upon the requirements of the individual business, a basic CMS starts from £1150.00 with e-commerce solutions starting at £1500.
This is a one-off payment, and the site design and content remains your copyright. (The copyright to Joomla! remains with Open Source Matters)
Hosting of your site costs £140 per annum with the first years hosting included in the price. If you require an annual SSL certificate for an e-coomerce site this will be charged at cost at the time of purchase.

All of our web engineering products can be expanded upon in the future.