Introduction to Content Management Systems

Hi, I'm Dave Ross, Lead Developer at Straight North. I'm here to talk to you about content management systems or CMS's. CMS's are tools we use to build websites. Allow our clients to make edits to content on their website without any thought to the programming behind it. When you are looking to launch a website, there's plenty of options available. You can build a website with just HTML and CSS, which is what we call a "static" website. You can build it on a platform like PHP or .Net. Or you can take advantage of the new generation of content management systems or CMS's that power everything from personal blogs to small business websites, all the way up to major brands like Nike, the Grammy Awards, and the White House. A content management system provides an easy interface for making changes to your website. Most content management systems have a wealth of optional features or plugins available. Here at Straight North, we use a content management system called Drupal. Drupal takes care of the drudge work of creating the HTML behind every page on your website. Our Drupal websites also feature visual editors, which allow you to manage the content on your page using an editor that looks and functions much like your favorite word processor. We also include functionality to let you manage the layout of a page or an entire section of your website. And you can rearrange individual pages within your website's navigation or menus. When Straight North builds a Drupal website, we also bake in solid SEO functionality and integration with popular analytics tools. We can even add forms to your websites for collecting sales leads, and email those leads directly to your sales team for immediate followup. We can also store those sales leads in a database for reporting. If you need, we can integrate with popular CRM tools like Salesforce. Content management systems offer advanced tools for maintaining your website and integrating it with other aspects of your business. Once again, I'm Dave Ross, Lead Developer at Straight North. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions about content management systems, Drupal, or website development in general. Thanks and have a good day.