A CMS gives you the power to edit, create and manage your website content. With a CMS, you have more advanced functionality than a flat file website with features such as news and blogging tools, simple file/image uploading, contact forms, user roles or permissions and photo galleries.
User management
You perhaps need user types that are outside of the typical WordPress roles. Maybe you need to give limited access to certain sections of the site, or you need to adjust the permissions of certain users beyond what is readily available in the CMS system.
Member management
WordPress can be used for sites with a member access feature. However, there are limitations. If you are an association or other member based organization with member management needs that go beyond a typical WordPress CMS, consider a CMS like Joomla or Drupal. These are open source CMS solutions, meaning they are free downloads just like WordPress. But, they do require coding to make them look and function how you want.
Access control
Some WCMS systems support user groups. User groups allow you to control how registered users interact with the site. A page on the site can be restricted to one or more groups. This means an anonymous user (someone not logged on), or a logged on user who is not a member of the group a page is restricted to, will be denied access to the page. There are different ways to grant "member" status to visitors so they can access secured or personalized areas of your website.
Scalable expansion
Available in most modern WCMSs is the ability to expand a single implementation (one installation on one server) across multiple domains, depending on the server's settings. WCMS sites may be able to create microsites/web portals within a main site as well.
Easily editable content
Once content is separated from the visual presentation of a site, it usually becomes much easier and quicker to edit and manipulate. Most WCMS software includes WYSIWYG editing tools allowing non-technical users to create and edit content.
Scalable feature sets
Most WCMS software includes plug-ins or modules that can be easily installed to extend an existing site's functionality.
Web standards upgrades
Active WCMS software usually receives regular updates that include new feature sets and keep the system up to current web standards.
Workflow management
Workflow is the process of creating cycles of sequential and parallel tasks that must be accomplished in the CMS. For example, one or many content creators can submit a story, but it is not published until the copy editor cleans it up and the editor-in-chief approves it.
Collaboration
CMS software may act as a collaboration platform allowing content to be retrieved and worked on by one or many authorized users. Changes can be tracked and authorized for publication or ignored reverting to old versions. Other advanced forms of collaboration allow multiple users to modify (or comment) a page at the same time in a collaboration session.
Delegation
Some CMS software allows for various user groups to have limited privileges over specific content on the website, spreading out the responsibility of content management. You can set up notifications for certain areas/content types of your site and grant members the ability to fine-tune what they want updates for and how often.
Document management
CMS software may provide a means of collaboratively managing the life cycle of a document from initial creation time, through revisions, publication, archive, and document destruction.
Content virtualization
CMS software may provide a means of allowing each user to work within a virtual copy of the entire website, document set, and/or code base. This enables changes to multiple interdependent resources to be viewed and/or executed in-context prior to submission.
Content syndication
CMS software often assists in content distribution by generating RSS and Atom data feeds to other systems. They may also e-mail users when updates are available as part of the workflow process.
Versioning
Like document management systems, CMS software may allow the process of versioning by which pages are checked in or out of the WCMS, allowing authorized editors to retrieve previous versions and to continue work from a selected point. Versioning is useful for content that changes over time and requires updating, but it may be necessary to go back to or reference a previous copy. You don't have to tackle everything at once. Begin with core functions and expand your features as time goes on. Some forethought to a rollout strategy can provide even more bang for your buck.
Easy customization
A universal layout is created, making pages have a similar theme and design without much code. Many CMS tools use a drag and drop AJAX system for their design modes, which makes it easy for beginners to create custom front-ends. Set up advanced/filtered searches to make it easier for your audience.
Easy to use
CMSs are designed with non-technical people in mind. Simplicity in design of the admin UI allows website content managers and other users to update content without much training in coding or technical aspects of system maintenance.
Workflow management
CMSs provide the facility to control how content is published, when it is published, and who publishes it. Some WCMSs allow administrators to set up rules for workflow management, guiding content managers through a series of steps required for each of their tasks.
Good For SEO
CMS websites are also good for search engine optimization (SEO). Freshness of content is one factor that helps, as it is believed that some search engines give preference to website with new and updated content than websites with stale and outdated content. Usage of social media plugins help in weaving a community around your blog. RSS feeds which are automatically generated by blogs or CMS websites can increase the number of subscribers and readers to your site. URL rewriting can be implemented easily, which produces clean URLs without parameters, which further help in SEO. There are plugins available that specifically help with website SEO. Set up web traffic analytics so you can view visitor trends to your site.
The most important thing a CMS can provide in the area of search engine optimization is human-readable URLs (the filename and filepath that make up each Web page’s address). If each URL has to be individually customized to be SEO-friendly, there’s a sizable chance that this step will eventually fall by the wayside. Ideally, a page's URL should default to something reasonably friendly — like the page title, for instance, as is customary with many blogging packages — without your content creators having to tweak anything manually.
Summary
A lot of our businesses start off with template-based systems or used very basic administrative tools to maintain their websites. These usually work well initially, when the sites are smaller and have less content, but over time these sites grow organically, and as the amount of content increases, so do the challenges of maintaining it. In many cases, the organization will have a person (or group of people) responsible for writing the content, and another person or group (usually IT or web developer) responsible for implementing the changes. This process tends to be very inefficient and takes more time and costs more money than is necessary.
A CMS can make the whole system efficient, manageable and cost-effective.
