A content management system can be used to:

• Simplify the addition and management of content on your site (so that this will all be possible without technical knowledge).
• Allow many people to edit and contribute to your site and allow control over which contributors have particular permissions.
• Set a template or theme for the site so that new content can be easily set to display with a consistent style.
• Incorporate security features, SEO features and other functionality and keep up to date with upgrades.
• Provide options to backup and export site content.

Around 5% of sites currently online use some form of web CMS technology - this means that roughly 95% of current websites can only be edited with specialist technical knowledge. This is unfortunate for the vast majority of people who are unlikely to have the familiarity with HTML, CSS, PHP, JavaScript or other languages that would be needed to fully control the content and appearance of their site without a CMS.

Fortunately the web CMS options continue to improve and be used more widely, allowing more people to take control of their site. Our preferred content management system at Juno tends to be WordPress. We find WordPress to be excellent in providing all the advantages listed above. We have been very pleased to see non-technical users managing text and images on their site and, in some cases, adding entirely new features to their site using WordPress plugins.

We'd be interested to hear about your experiences of using content management systems so please do add a comment if you have anything you feel compelled to share.

The next post in this series will feature more information about how WordPress compares with other popular web content management systems.