A content management system, or CMS is an online platform that allows users to manage their websites, easily upload, edit and distribute all sorts of content requiring them to write thousands of lines of code. 

Content can be of different formats like text, images, videos, PDF’s or any form of data you want to post online.

In short CMS designed by a software development company in Dubai ensures that the content machinery works smoothly. Be sure to implement these six optimal practices for your CMS.        

1. Know what you want

Before choosing a CMS, it is important to engage with multiple stakeholders to pick the best way. Consider the final users first because they are the final beneficiaries. For example, if the web master is the sole user at a firm, then a CMS with technical aspects would cause no trouble.

Instead, a company with a full size content management team should posess a clean straightforward CMS. Also, have scalability in mind while reviewing various options. Scalability should contain usability and price of content management as you grow.   

2. Always Go for A Good Web Hosting Provider

Having their own servers might be a luxury for several companies. Since the web host service somewhat responsible in determining your website’s load speed, make sure to choose a fast one. 

Here are a few things to keep in mind:   

• Select a host with maximum uptime. Uptime is the duration of the server is active. Many hosts offer an uptime of 99.9%.You must pay an amount based on the monthly traffic you get, which consists of storage and bandwidth. 
• Do analyse your current website traffic, and zero in on a figure to help you choose the right plan. If you run a high traffic website, choose a high bandwidth plan. 
• Assess customer support based on the average lead time and ways of communication. This is highly important if you have a team of your own exclusively managing the back-end CMS.
• The different types of servers include-shared, dedicated and cloud. Choose any server based on your traffic analysis, storage requirement and budget.

3. Take the Best Security Measures

It’s often in the news of hackers taking advantages of security vulnerabilities to reveal sensitive data. It is not uncommon for companies to pay hefty sums to regain access to their data.

Always choose a reputed host, customize the CMS login URL, capping on login attempts, and frequently updating to the latest CMS version are some of the steps to improve website security. 

Moreover, automating the website backup will give you a copy of every website files on a safe server which can be accessed in case the website data is in danger.   

4. Careful selection of Extensions  

Extensions can give you additional features to you CMS. For example, although you can’t develop an online store with Wordpress alone, a Woo-Commerce extension can come in handy to develop a full-fledged e-commerce website.  

Certain extensions improve the website’s performance, some increase the user interface, and some let you seamlessly incorporate third party services. 

5. What are your Team Roles and Workflows

Releasing content on CMS platform has to go through three steps: creating, approving and releasing. These duties can be effectively handled by a single person or by an entire team depending on the frequency of content produced. 

To release content on required frequency there should be clearly defined roles and well established work flow.

Hence you should bear in mind your current process, tweak it when required, and reassign roles to the team members.  This will allow you to do two things:

One depending on the user role arrange required training sessions for the team members. For example, an author only needs the authority and knowledge to add content but at the same time the super admin should have all the wherewith all to know the ins and outs of the system.

Two, because of clearly defined roles for each team associate, different projects and content pieces can be managed concurrently without being overwhelmed.

Hence, depending on their utility, they can carry out back-end, front-end or simultaneously on both sides. Based on the extensions that run in the front end the load speed of the website can be brought down considerably.

The critical thing is to choose plugins or extensions known for their excellent coding practices.

6. Design Content Templates

Templates offers a guideline on how the content should be structured which in turn brings in an efficiency and lowers errors.

The content can either be a list, blog post or a log article or even a press release.

There should also be standards to add on Page SEO factors. A SEO extension can also be added to these properties.

Conclusion

A CMS gives a chance to run websites without any coding skills. Before choosing a CMS, assess them thoroughly for their budget, security and scalability standards. If in doubt you can always consult a company offering open source development services.

While some of the biggies chose to use an open source CMS such as WordPress and Drupal, an open source CMS can be customized with the help of  an Open Source CMS Development Company Dubai or build one on your own if you have specific requirements.