Developing your existing content management system (CMS) can be a complex and time-consuming process, but it is also an important step for any organization that relies on a CMS to manage and publish its online content.
Whether you’re looking to add new features, improve performance, or simply make your CMS easier to use, there are several steps you can take to ensure a successful development process.
What is a Content Management System?
A Content Management System (CMS) is a software application used to create, edit, manage, and publish digital content. It is most often designed to support the creation and management of a wide range of digital content types, including text, images, audio, video, and more.
While a CMS is not technically necessary to upload and manage digital content, it provides a user-friendly interface that allows users to create and edit their content without requiring any technical expertise or knowledge of HTML or other coding languages. It also includes tools for organizing and managing content, allowing administrators to set up menus, categories, and tags, and scheduling, content to be published at a certain date.
CMS can be a great tool for optimizing workflow at your company, making it easy to create, manage, and edit digital content – provided it is well-optimized and follows consistent review procedures.
Optimizing your CMS
Before you begin the development of your CMS, you’ll need to identify key goals and objectives for your development project. This will help guide the development process and ensure that the end results will meet the needs of your business.
Assess the current state of your CMS. Review user feedback, analyze usage data, and conduct a thorough technical assessment of the system. Before you start making changes to your Content Management System, you’ll need to understand how it is currently being used, what its limitations are, and what challenges it may be facing.
Plan the development process carefully. Once you establish the state of your CMS, start with creating a roadmap or timeline, identifying resources and budget, and outlining the specific tasks and deliverables that will be required.
Keep your CMS in check with frequent audits
Continually auditing your CMS workflow process is a great way to make sure everything works as expected, saving you money on maintenance and avoiding potential downtime. Establish a CMS workflow for assigning, creating, editing, and publishing content. If you’re using Drupal, consider using Drupal support services to bug fix and further develop your CMS.
Workflow audits can help eliminate duplicate content and inconsistent messaging, reduce time wasted on finding assignments lost in email inboxes, improve your overall website design and writing style, and more. Getting rid of redundant content lowers your costs and raises the overall content quality, with each assignment completed to a set standard, properly edited, and published at an established time.
