One of the key things to look out for when buying a website is whether or not it comes with a Content Management System, known as CMS for short.

Traditionally, a website would be designed by a web designer using specialist software such as Adobe Dreamweaver.  All the graphics, pages, text etc would be programmed in this software and then uploaded to your website hosting.

If you wanted to change some text, replace a photo or add a page to your website, you would have to ask your web designer to do this for you, or learn how to do this yourself (i.e. learn to be a web programmer).

This is now all changing thanks to clever thing called a Content Management System (CMS). Basically, it is an online control panel that allows you to edit the content of your website or blog.  The style and layout of the site is still programmed by a professional web designer, but once the site is up and running, you have control over the content of the pages and are therefore able to manage your site yourself.  For example, you could add your latest news, update the description of a product or add a new page for a new service offered by your company.  The great thing about a content management system is that you not only save money by making changes to the site yourself, but you are also more likely to keep your site up to date if you can easily and quickly do it yourself for free.

A CMS may cost a little more than a website without one, but in the long term it will pay for itself many times over.  At semi-skimmed we build all of our websites using the Wordpress content management system, or in the case of ecommerce websites we use Magento, both of which are extremely versatile, reliable and easy to use.

Find out more about Wordpress in our Introduction to Wordpress article.