Using a Content Management System

Forum Moderators: open

Message Too Old, No Replies

Using a Content Management System

floridadesigns

2:48 pm on Sep 26, 2008 (gmt 0)

I actually enjoy writing quality content for readers, and not necessarily trying to sell anything to my visitors. But I often find that creating pages manually can be quite time consuming. I know it is the best way to ensure proper SEO of each page, but I've also recently created two new CMS (Joomla) sites. It is far easier to just focus on writing the articles, than to spend more time placing keywords here and there, etc. I'm sure I'm not the only one who has asked this question, but I would like to know other webmasters experience with the two types of sites before I start spending all my time on a Joomla site.

Can a CMS generated site be just as good as one you coded by hand in terms of SEO? And is all that extra time spent optimizing each page on the site really worth that much over the time saved by using a CMS?

I'm not sure which way to turn, so let me know if you have any thoughts on this. Thanks in advance..

Quadrille

10:23 pm on Sep 29, 2008 (gmt 0)

No easy answer, I'm afraid.

But how do the two pages compare from a visitor POV?

Which will make for a better site?
Which may yield bookmarks?
Which may inspire links?
Which will get conversions?
Which will ensure repeat visits?

Only you can answer those questions for your site.
Only you can decide which of those questions matters most.

scottb

7:52 pm on Sep 30, 2008 (gmt 0)

If you have a large site, then the amount of time you will save in the long run with a cms makes it well worth the effort.

Imagine trying to change the header or some other part of the design on a site with 1,000 or even 100 pages. It's a total pain.

If you are experimenting with Joomla, try using an SEF extension such as sh404SEF, which will help you manage your SEO. It automatically makes the urls/titles search friendly.

And if by keywords you mean meta keywords, there are folks out there who say they aren't as important as they used to be because quite a few search engines don't bother with them. If by keywords you mean optimizing the headlines, image tags, etc., you would have to do that anyway if you build your pages manually.

Excellira

2:03 pm on Oct 6, 2008 (gmt 0)

There should be little or no difference in publicly viewable page code between a properly optimized CMS and hand coding.

CMSs simplify many things but at a cost. They are much more complicated to setup, theme, optimize, and maintain. If you have a small site, it may not be worth the hassle. If you have a lot of special features, a fair number of pages, and are adding content frequently a CMS might be the better way to go.

Joomla has the best stock templates but I'm a big fan of Drupal and Modx. Drupal has a very steep learning curve.