The Content Management System (CMS) is no longer simply a content release, and becomes more flexible to help users manage workflows. With CMS, you can easily plan, edit, index, and publish content, while designers and programmers can more flexibly customize the appearance and functions of the website. Although there are currently many leading content management systems, in this article, I mainly choose CMS to Evaluate the availability of design, code, and end users. We hope to help you find a suitable content management system.
Content Management System Evaluation
It is difficult to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of the content management system, not because of the high technology, but because there are too many selectable content management systems. However, if there is a set of fixed methods, it will be much easier to evaluate. Before deciding which content management system to use, let's talk about what to pay attention. An outstanding content management system should have the following eight features:
1. easy to understand and use
A content management system should have a good image user interface (GUI). It looks comfortable and there are no redundant complex options, and the management interface should be very simple. A good user interface means that creating and managing content is faster, time-saving, and efficient.
You can also look at this problem from an end user's perspective: If you are creating a content management system for a non-proficient customer, what you choose is a solution that requires a computer doctor to solve. They are unlikely to use this system (this also damages the original intention of the content management system to help users .)
2. flexible and easy to customize
When considering the content management system, make sure that you are not required to use the template they designed. There are many excellent CMS solutions that allow you to customize website design without special restrictions. If the CMS you choose forces you to choose a fixed and unchangeable template, they deprive you of your creativity, and your website will be exactly the same as others.
There are also many CMS templates, such as Expression Engine, WordPress, and joomla. These content management systems are outstanding in terms of customization.
3. extensions can be made through plug-ins and modules.
A good CMS allows you to extend the default configuration through the plug-in, and collect useful site functions in your website. By using plug-ins/extensions/modules, you can improve your website's ability to provide practical options for users.
In case you need to write an extension by yourself, you should look for a content management system with very powerful application interfaces (APIS. At the same time, check that the system already has a large list of plug-ins. Although you may not need a plug-in now, it may be used in the future. It is always better to have a plug-in.
4. No programming knowledge required
If you are more concerned with design, remember to select a content management system that can publish and maintain your website without too much programming knowledge.
There are many CMS editors that are known as income, so that you can edit the content without code. It is time-consuming to edit text using HTML markup language, so that you do not have enough energy to handle other aspects of website construction.
If you want to create a complex website, you can select a CMS that can write code to edit it. PHP ,. CSS ,. HTML file without modifying it by using a third-party source code editor.
5. Performance and Speed Optimization
Considering that the speed at which the browser downloads the web page and the speed at which the website connects to the server is very important, you should avoid the system with a large structure when selecting CMS. Otherwise, visitors will only be discouraged. You can check whether the download speed of a website is fast enough by visiting the website instance.
Remember, you can speed up website download by choosing a good host, adding Cache/compression feed plug-ins, CSS, JS, and cache database objects. You can use a simple free tool yslow to detect website speeds. After installing it, go to the demo site provided by CMS to see how it is executed on the front-end.
6. Security
To protect your content, you must ensure that the site is secure enough. Some CMS allows you to install specialized plug-ins and edit files/permissions to improve security. Make sure that your CMS provides a module to protect the integrity of your website. You can also select a CMS that allows each user to register a different user name and password, so that you can view and control each access user.
7. Documentation and Community Support
If you want to do something, you can't find any reference on the Internet. I believe there is nothing more depressing than this. To ensure that this kind of thing will not happen to you, you must first browse the documents on the CMS site. You can quickly search for some popular and informative content management systems.
Whether or not the support of users using the system is directly related to the success or failure of your transaction. If users are very active and proud to be part of the community, not only can you communicate directly with individuals familiar with this system, but more importantly, you can confirm that this system will continue to develop and improve. Otherwise, wasting your energy and resources on a promising system will crash you.
8. Pay attention to network standards and best practices
Only content management systems developed in compliance with network standards and best practices can ensure that they will not be taken away in the future. Only applications designed to comply with best practices can ensure compatibility with cross-browser, lean and mean code and ease of maintenance.
Therefore, we need to find a content management system that focuses on network standards and regards it as the most important part of development and design concepts.