Five Benefits of a Custom Content Management System (CMS)

After many years of experience using WordPress, at SilverServers we eventually made the decision to build our own custom Content Management System (CMS). As web developers, we realize there are great benefits to building and managing websites on a custom CMS and want to share some of those benefits with you!

First, what is a CMS? You can read details about our Content Management Systems on our CMS page but basically a CMS is software that is used to create and modify digital content. It helps users create and manage their content without needing a great deal of technical knowledge. In simple terms, it is a tool that helps you build your website even if you don’t know how to write code.

Five Benefits of a Custom CMS

Highly Secure

Custom sites are not generally targeted by hackers or automated bots in the same way bigger CMS programs are. Automated bots try to get into sites all the time, and when we see them we typically see that they’re designed to exploit known weaknesses in well-known software like Wordpress. It is significantly less likely that you will see an automated bot designed to get into a custom content management system.

Leverage

A custom CMS, optimized to be what a Search Engine wants it to be, provides the ability to leverage all of your content in search results without you needing to know much of anything about SEO. When you combine great content with extremely efficient and quality website code, Google and others have almost no choice but to start viewing your website as the authority on its topics. So many times we see webpages that cost thousands of dollars launched and live without any meta descriptions or sitemaps. A sitemap might seem like a small piece of the puzzle for example, but when it comes to the ‘constant content creation’ game having a map that allows Google to crawl your site faster and more accurately may be the difference between potential clients using your company to make informed topic decisions and not.

Easy to Make Changes

How many times have you visited a website only to read outdated information that desperately needs to be updated? Chances are the CMS was too cumbersome for the user to operate easily and so they neglected to make timely changes. With a customized system, adding pages, updating information, and loading content is quick and simple. Need help getting the hang of it? Support teams for custom systems are often easier to get in contact with than support teams in big companies

Price Expectations

Although many big CMS programs are free to start, web design for them isn’t cheap, and using a company’s services to make simple changes adds up quickly. Over time, the unexpected costs of managing a website made up of plugins from multiple providers will add up. With a custom CMS, you know what you’re in for from the start and every piece of the website comes from under the same roof. This means that although the startup cost will be more than “free”, additional customization down the line may take less time and money because the same team that built the site will be the team adding the customization. There will be less time needed to make new pieces fit into your site and keep them up-to-date.

Endless Customization Options

When features are custom-developed, you can be confident they are going to work with your base CMS platform. Instead of spending hours finding, installing and updating WordPress plugins that might take care of a few needs, in a custom CMS system new tools can be built directly into your website to work with the existing system flawlessly and do exactly what you need. With custom CMS, you aren’t making compromises to build your site around strict plugins built by multiple providers all over the world. You can build the site how you want, instead of only how the available plugins allow.

If a one-size-fits-all CMS doesn’t suit your needs (does it suit anyone’s really?) then customization is probably for you. At Silver Servers, we will take your exact needs into consideration when building your website and develop a system that works specifically for you. To discuss how our business has benefited from using our custom CMS and find out how we can help you, reach out to Silver Servers today.

For more related content, check out the Paradigm CMS section of our blog!