The new year presents as a fantastic opportunity to reassess your online presence. The fact that there are 4.6 billion active internet users worldwide should be more than enough to convince you that your website and social media channels are worth putting a bit of time and money into. There are literally billions of potential customers out there just waiting to discover your business.

Building a website tends to come with a lot of questions. For example, you might be wondering which CMS platform is best to support your online vision. Or, having read that first question, you might be wondering what a CMS even is.

Either way, Newpath Web is here to help. For over a decade we have built functional, engaging websites for everyone from small businesses to multinational organisations. We know what it takes to have a website succeed and can quickly identify which content management system is best equipped to meet your individual needs.

With 2022 just around the corner, many businesses are looking at giving their online presence a reboot. Continue reading to learn more about your CMS options and Newpath Web’s full suite of web development services.

CMS vs HTML

Not sure what a CMS platform is? Here’s a quick overview.

A long time ago, the process of building a website could only be done from the ground up, using what is known as HTML. HTML stands for HyperText Markup Language — it’s a formatting system that can be used to display web content. HTML controls everything from how a web page is structured to its actual content. It’s a type of code and you’ve probably seen it before as a combination of letters, numbers, and punctuation marks.

The thing about HTML is that it can be quite time consuming. While it’s not particularly difficult to learn, a small mistake can have significant consequences for your site. In that sense, it’s not very user friendly and is best dealt with only by those with good tech knowledge.

Any developer you hire will probably be able to build you a website using HTML. The problem is what happens after they’re gone. Your website isn’t a static thing; you need to update it with new products or updates about what’s going on at your company. Unless you know how to code, that’s going to be difficult.

CMS platforms are designed to do away with this problem. Think of a CMS as scaffolding. It’s a type of software that provides both developers and business owners with a user-friendly interface to design and personalise a website. Adding, editing, and removing content can be done with the click of a few buttons, rather than hours spent digging through the website’s back-end. 

CMS platforms also make it easier for multiple users to access a site at the one time and often come packed with marketing and SEO tools to help promote your site online. 

CMS platforms

CMS platforms are not a new invention. They’ve been around for nearly as long as the internet. However, over the last few years, as more and more businesses have invested in establishing an online presence, CMS platforms have evolved to become incredibly powerful and user friendly. 

Here at Newpath Web, our team has experience developing sites on many of the world’s leading content management systems. Our strength lies in first identifying which platform will meet your needs, before then making the most of the technology to build you a unique and engaging website.

A few of our favourite and most commonly used CMS platforms include:

WordPress

There’s a reason that WordPress is the world’s most popular CMS platform, powering 39 percent of the internet. It’s incredibly user friendly yet still powerful enough to support large-scale sites. It has great SEO features, is compatible with plenty of third-party plugins, and is very affordable.

Drupal

Drupal is perhaps less well known than WordPress, but it’s still been used to power some heavy hitting websites, including The Australian Government, Tesla, and NASA. 

It’s a little more complex than WordPress, which is why it’s good to have a professional web development services team on your side when using this platform. Drupal offers significant scalability, security, and customisation ability. 

Kentico

Kentico is the go-to platform for those wanting to build an e-commerce site. It is spruiked as an online marketing, e-commerce, and CMS platform rolled into one. It’s highly customisable and comes packed with reporting tools to track user behaviour and create personalised marketing campaigns. 

If none of these platforms are suitable, we are also able to develop using Sitecore, Magento, Umbraco, Joomla, Open CMS, DotNetNuke, Concrete5 and Adobe Business Catalyst. 

While CMS platforms all have the same goal — to help simplify the process of building a website, they arrive at this objective through very different pathways. The best way to find out which CMS platform is most suitable for your needs is by speaking personally with Newpath Web and our web development services team. Contact us today to learn more about our services and how we can turn your digital dreams into reality.