What is CMS & What Should You Choose?

You are looking to create a website for your business and confused which CMS or Content Management System to select. You don't even know what CMS stands for and just want to go ahead with building a website.

You approach a web developer and he gives you a quotation worth thousands of dollars writing terminology in the proposal that you don't understand & never heard of.

So what should you do?

Its important that you first understand what CMS means.

Content management system (CMS) is a software application that enables users to create, edit, collaborate on, publish and store digital content. In other words, a CMS, is a software application that allows users to build and manage a website without having to code it from scratch, or know how to code at all.

So, you as a non-developer can create a website without learning coding or having minimal coding knowledge without having to rely on developers completely.

In the early days of the web, you needed to know HTML to be able to?code a website?and publish your content online. That used to be hard, but CMS has made it much easier. Instead of writing your website code from scratch, the CMS software does it for you.

What are different types of CMS?

If you are considering creating & publishing a website, you should look at the cost, ease-of-use, flexibility, and scalability of your CMS.

There are a lot of Content Management Systems out there like Drupal, Joomla, Magento, Wix, Weebly, Squarespace, Hubspot & more.

If you are a non developer and have no knowledge of coding, then my recommendation is you go with the evergreen WordPress CMS.

WordPress powers around 38% of world's website and is extremely user-friendly and almost coding free.

WordPress comes with drag & drop builder making page creation seamless and easy. WordPress offers a huge repository of plugins which are free to install and use on your website. It also integrated with thousands of applications and is compatible with tons of themes.

History of WordPress

WordPress was created as a standalone project all the way back in 2003, originating as an offshoot of a previous project called?b2/cafelog.

WordPress is open-source software, so nowadays it’s made by a huge community of contributors. But if we were to trace WordPress’ origins back to its roots, its original creation was a collaboration between Matt Mullenweg and Mike Little.

Since then, Matt Mullenweg has largely become the face of WordPress. He’s also the founder of Automattic, which is the company behind the for-profit WordPress.com service.

Websites you can create using WordPress

WordPress works really well for all industries. It already powers millions of website, blogs across the world and is even the favorite when it comes to e-commerce websites as well. Here's a look at what sites you can create:

• Business websites
• eCommerce stores
• Blogs
• Portfolios
• Resumes
• Forums
• Social networks
• Membership sites & pretty much anything else you can dream of...

When you have decided to use WordPress, be mindful that there are 2 types of WordPress - wordpress.org and wordpress.com.

• WordPress.org, often called?self-hosted WordPress, is the free, open-source WordPress software that you can install on your own web host to create a website that’s 100% your own.
• WordPress.com?is a for-profit, paid service that is?powered?by the WordPress.org software. It’s simple to use, but you lose much of the flexibility of the self-hosted WordPress.

Most of the time, when people say “WordPress”, they mean the self-hosted WordPress available at WordPress.org.?If you want to truly own your website, self-hosted WordPress.org is almost always the best option.

All you need to get started to purchase a domain & hosting.

Go for Hosting providers like Hostgator or Hostinger as they provide you with a free domain for the 1st year.

So, the only cost/investment is purchase & renewal of Hosting & the domain.

So, why should you use WordPress?

Here are the top reasons why you should use WordPress instead of other CMS :

1) WordPress is free & open source : One of the biggest benefits of WordPress is that it’s free, open-source software. While you will need to pay a little bit for hosting,?you will never have to pay just to use the WordPress software, which isn’t the case with?alternatives like Squarespace.

2) WordPress is easy to install : WordPress is developed keeping in mind that non-developers also use it. Its super easy to install WP on your computer. In many cases, many hosting providers like HostGator provide 1-click WP install

3) Free Themes : WP provides tons of free themes for different businesses and industries that you can use.

4) Free Plugins : There are millions of free & paid WordPress plugins that you can easily install which makes your life much easier. For example, you can use free contact form, email marketing, social media integration or even a SEO plugin.

5) Easy To Use website dashboard : The WP dashboard is easy to use. The navigational structure is intuitive, easy to understand and use.

6) Easy to create new pages, add images & videos: Creating new pages and adding content, images, videos, GIF's is a breeze. In some other CMS solutions, you'd need to pay the developers to create new pages, while in WP you don't have to pay a dime

7) Ability to customize : You can easily customize a lot of elements on your website, edit pages, and upload different material

8) Great support : Because WP is so popular, you'll easily find support, tutorials, youtube videos, forums, Facebook groups etc all in a second

9) Multiple users : You can add as many users as you want giving them different levels of authorization

There are tons of free website themes in WordPress that you can install or you can also download themes from popular WP theme websites like Elegant Themes, also known as Divi

I'll cover in future blogs how you can use Divi, install it on your WordPress website and select the themes which fit your business.

Summary :

Whether you are just starting out or you have an established organization looking to create a new website, WordPress should be your preferred choice of CMS. It gives you complete control and doesn't leave you at the mercy of developers.

You can easily select a pre-made theme of your choice or create a bespoke website with the help of a page builder. In the case of latter, once the development is done, you get complete control of the website allowing you to create new pages.

So, what's your favorite CMS and have you every used WordPress? Let me know in the comments section.