A CMS or content management system can make or break any website – especially those websites operated by small businesses. I have seen many cases where a small business owner is frustrated with his/her website because it does nothing and they do not have the HTML and CSS skill to update simple content such as telephone numbers, company history, products for sale, and the list goes on. Or the webmaster or employee that they have hired is inaccessible or slow at updating. So what do they do? They resort to doing nothing and their sites become archaic.

Small business owners have a lot on their plate in order to run their businesses. So in most cases updating the website is not high on the priority list since the site is likely already outdated and giving a bad impression and not generating any leads or revenue.

Now, enter the world of the content management system (CMS). Generally speaking a good CMS will allow you to at minimum edit your static content, insert pictures and change the formatting of your text. The way CMS’s work is that your website design is transformed into a template which specifies the editable content areas. This way you can edit your content without breaking the layout of the site. A few good web hosting providers can work with all the top CMS systems and may even help you install and convert your website to work with them.

Content management systems are available in all shapes and sizes. Some are free and others you have to license. Some are complicated to use and others are newbie friendly. Some only run on specialized frameworks like .NET or JSP and Java and others are built on Open Source Friendly languages such as PHP.

For most small businesses, you want to choose a CMS that has been around a long while and has a large following. This helps to ensure stability and in many cases flexibility as if you ever need work done on your CMS your costs will be lower and your choice of help greater. CMS’s that require specialized frameworks are generally more complicated and require specialized hosting like Windows Hosting or Java Hosting- which increase costs. I am of the opinion based on my own experiences the following CMS’s are best suited for small businesses and small business owners. For most CMS’s you will still need to have someone help integrate your chosen CMS into your website, however after this step you are able to manage your own website.

1) Joomla, www.joomla.org This CMS has been around for numerous years and almost has a cult following. The most current version of Joomla has a refined administration panel which makes it even easier for new users to operate. The Joomla community has amassed numerous extensions from free to paid for all types of industries and solutions that are needed. The development cycle for Joomla is also very fast, so this means the community is always releasing new updates and security fixes.

2) CMS MadeSimple, www.cmsmadesimple.com This is a great CMS that has gained much popularity. It is lightweight and easy to setup. Unlike other CMS systems it is very simplified. This makes it very good for small sites or sites that need to be quickly developed .

3) GL Fusion, Gives you the ability to quickly and easily setup websites complete with extras like forums, CAPTCHA support, calendaring, and full file and media gallery management solutions, and MooTools AJAX support. glFusion creates sites that arefully XHTML compliant with a pure CSS driven layout. The design is SEO friendly and is also accessible by screen readers and other assistance tools used by the visually impaired.

4) Etomite, This CMS makes use of some new content delivery techniques, specifically in the utilization of AJAX. You can incorporate AJAX functionality through the backend editor without any knowledge of AJAX programming. In addition, this CMS system creates your site in a fully W3C/XHTML validated format. This is become more and more important with regard to search engines and placement, and having a clean cross browser compatible site.

5) Impress CMS, This is a community developed CMS ans still young compared to the others listed above. However, its fast growing and as easy to use as editing a word document. This CMS won the 2008 most promising CMS award and currently, a small selection of add-on modules are available.
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Marketing of small business websites online is as important as getting it listed at a higher ranking on Search Engine listings. Either you have to design or build your own website or you have to hire professional website designers to do the job. There are different types of marketing service providers available online to market your site, like submitting your site for search engines and providing search engine optimization report by an expert. There is also provision to advertise in the Online Internet Yellow Pages where professionals design and place an advertisement program in these yellow pages like Yahoo!?, Worldpages, Smartpages, and Yellowpages.com.

Then comes the email marketing. As email is the number one popular online activity among internet users, be at home or at work, this creates a prime marketing opportunity, for both large and small businesses. For small businesses it is also one of the most cost-effective ways to market products and services. In fact, you can professionally create and send e-mail newsletters, promotions, and updates to your customers in minutes, thereby increasing the web traffic to your site.

All this requires managing and maintaining your website content to a professional grade. That is where Content Management System (CMS) comes in. CMS is a web application used for creating websites and also managing the web content. It can also be used for storing and publishing documentation such as technical manuals, operators’ manuals, sales guides, etc. It provides many software tools to enhance the look of your site. For example, attractive product display headings are a must for every site. Using CMS you can create customizable Flash Banners and Navigation. It also helps in creating standard visual templates that can be automatically applied to new and existing content, creating one central place and change that look across all content on your site.

They also have plug-ins that can be easily installed to extend your existing site’s functionality. For example, if you wanted to add a product catalog or chat program to a website, one could easily install a module/plug-in to add that functionality rather than hiring a web developer to write code to that new functionality.

They are designed to receive regular updates that include new feature sets and keep the system up to latest web standards. These updates are usually designed for easy installation either on-top of your existing website or modifying it suitably. There are many open-source and paid CMS solutions available.
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