Content Management Systems

The answer to all the company needs. A customer relations and management package, coupled with a marketing system, and topped with complete control over the aesthetics.

A CMS is more than a buzzword, it's an entire backend system to your online business and there is a massive selection of platforms available on the market. The finest and most widely used solutions are in fact open source systems and the reason for this is simple: Community Support. In short, open source platforms such as Drupal, Joomla, and DotNetNuke are successful because of popularity as a result of design and function, rather than marketing.

Speedpro Imaging Kelowna, B.C.

Brigitte Music Kelowna, B.C.

Kirschner Mountain Kelowna, B.C.

Autumnfire Studios Kelowna, B.C.

Kelowna Jiu Jitsu Kelowna, B.C.

Ansell Construction Ltd. West Kelowna, B.C.

Naze Khajavi Re/Max Kelowna, B.C.

Why Does My Company Need a CMS?

What is a CMS?

Before deciding if your company's website presence is in need of a CMS, you need to understand what a CMS is. CMS is an acronym for "Content Management System" meaning that it empowers the client to update and maintain the website without the help of a web developer.

Why Do I Need a CMS?

A CMS offers a wide variety of functionality that can be added to your website. The least of which is editing text for quick publishing and updating through specified modules. The ability to maintain user accounts allows for numerous different opportunities involving the way your website is interacted with and displayed. New pages can easily be added at the click of a button and a long list of modules greets you when you decide to add them. All changes can immediately be published the moment they are changed, making it perfect for keeping your business's website up to date with all important information that needs to be displayed.

Quality control is made easy with the ability to edit the website yourself, eliminating the call to your web designer to make the change for you. This will save your company the costs of paying for hours of updates to your website, allowing for more growth through your web presence.

Benefits of CMS Platforms

• Content can be easily managed without the help of a webmaster and with little to no technical knowledge of Web design and coding, drastically reducing the cost of ownership

• The ability to add modules/widgets and updates ensures your CMS is always up to date with the latest software and increases the longevity of your website

• Allows for the delegation of updating the website with the user control feature, allowing multiple logins with different security rights, so no changes or access without appropriate permissions

• Modular layout means an easily swapped appearance without having to rewrite and repost all the content

• Quality control over your own content as you have it added to the website

DotNetNuke

DotNetNuke is the CMS of choice for TechnoCraft ^Online. DotNetNuke is an open source web application framework that is written in VB.NET for the ASP.NET framework. Originally developed by Shaun Walker as an IBuySpy Portal starter kit, which had been eariler released by Microsoft as a sample application for the .NET framework. DotNetNuke (or DNN for short) is in it's 5th version and has seen 56 public releases.

Because of DNN's extensive history and the fact that it has had over 4 million downloads in it's lifetime make this CMS's code polished and easy to use.

There are many modules that come with the initial install of DNN to your website, and hundreds available from the many developers that design and create ASP (Advanced Server Pages) .NET modules for it.

The support community for DotNetNuke is enormous, so there is very little that is not available for this CMS platform.

Drupal

Drupal has been an industry staple for years and has seen great success with a robust and powerful framework that allows for all sorts of funky features that many CMS platforms simply don't offer.

Using the PHP (Pre Hypertext Processor) server side language, Drupal has succeeded because of the abstract approach it uses for the configuration of the framework.

In short, Drupal is like a collection of Playdough, where DotNetNuke would be a box of Lego. The real benefit behind Drupal is the value: Because PHP is an open source language that rides upon open source server software, the cost of operating a Drupal CMS is sometimes half the cost of ASP hosting. Naturally, as a result of this popularity, the CMS enjoys a massive following and a considerable support base.

Basic Features

TechnoCraft ^Online implements these features for all CMS Websites

• The ability to post and edit your content the same way as you would with Microsoft Office. You can drag images from office into your text module for display. You can edit the font, color and size of your text as you would in Office

• The ability to post announcements easily onto your site and update them as necessary.

• Ability to search your website for any content a customer is looking for

• Easy to use forms you can set up for anything that you would like, from contact forms to surveys. You can have the results emailed directly to your inbox

• SEO friendly CMS. It is straightforward adding the keywords to your new pages, making it easier be found on search engines world wide or locally

Extra Features

These features are discussed and installed on a per-module basis

• The online store module allows you to set up your business's site for ecommerce. This is a great way to expand your companies market beyond your local scope, or allows those who do not have the time to come to your store to still receive the great products and services you offer

• Dynamic Image Gallery that can be looked through, played back and created to match the look of your website. Descriptions and multiple gallerys are a possibility with this amazing tool.

• Newsletter mailing system that can be used to keep your clients and employees in the loop. You can mail out as many newsletters as your webhost will allow you to

• RSS feeds that can be watched and subscribed to by customers and employee's so they are always up to date on you website content.

• Online blog software that can has the capability to create video, audio, image or text blogs that you can use to keep visitors in the know about what is going on with you

• A great listing system you can use for nearly anything you can imagine, from an art gallery to a FAQ page.

Community Benefits

• The ability to have user accounts makes it possible to run community applications such as a forum or journal almost instantly

• You have complete control over what content users see with varied levels of security

• Create surveys/polls and track page use locally to collect important information regarding your visitors

• Users can create personal profiles that can be viewed from any social application installed

• Have users place favorite status on store products and share them with friends

DotNetNuke and Drupal are both award-winning open source Content Management Systems that TechnoCraft ^Online has a firm mastery of. The community support behind DNN and Drupal is large and there is no shortage of widgets or modules to provide the functions you want in your site at the drop of a hat.
Ofcourse, TechnoCraft ^Online provides the expertise in sourcing and customizing modules/widgets as necessary.

Is This for Me?

CMS platforms provide the robust functionality you need with a website. You can update it yourself, free of a web designer. No technical knowledge of webdesign is required to use a CMS.
If you are in a business where your web presence will require easily accessible updates, a CMS is a requirement.