Selecting a Web Content Management System may seem like a complicated decision, but it doesn’t have to be. With a good CMS, you do not need to know what PHP, .Net, MySQL, HTML, and CSS mean. That is what the CMS is for. Your job is to select something that has the capacity to deliver a strong return on the investment that you make in your website while delivering tangible business growth.

Expert Developments has put together a list of the basic necessities for your CMS. There are a lot of them, and this list will continue to expand, as part of a three week focus on CMS basics.

Please feel free to leave a comment, or email us if there is anything we miss through this series.

- Any business functions; e-commerce, event management, CRM tools. There are a wide variety of CMS toold. Have a look at www.getmost.info for some enterprise management system tools that can work on the web. Are there any others that you need? Come up with an idea, and see if you can get it.

- Stable, reliable platform; your website is a global entity. With visitors and enquiries potentially coming through at all hours, it is essential that the platform your website is hosted on is reliable, and has strong up-time. 99.9% is a minimum.

- 128 bit encryption, SSL certificates; they say information is power, and they’re right. Make sure that this power is kept secure. There are too many reasons to spell why security is important for your website, and content management system. If these two things are not achievable, do not consider it.

- Media capability – ability to insert video, documents, images, and music to your website for view, play, or download. The web is interactive, and people don’t just go there to read. (apart from when they are reading interesting blogs like this). Make sure that your website is not restricted to only text, or limited in the formats it works with. There is a wide world of interactivity available online, and your website visitors expect to be able to access it all.

- Statistics package; the key to business is espoused by all business mentors as being Return-On-Investment. To assess that return, you can put subjective measures in place, or do it like a pro, and count page visits, unique urls, search terms, and more. Use this to make changes, and assess their results.

- Ability to assign permission to users for different areas of the website; with larger websites, it becomes necessary for more than one person to maintain and update content. Make sure that your CMS has a range of permission options for your own protection and simplicity.

- Custom templates; your website is yours and yours alone. It is a point of contact, and differentiation. You want people to see your website as being something specific to what you do. You want the template and design to be structured around your needs, and the needs of your website visitors. Custom templates make sure you have a website that suits your business down to the letter.

This list will continue to expand. Please let us know any other features you can't do without, and we'll make sure they get added to the list....

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Continue to part 3