You don't have a full-time IT department to maintain the website but you need to update your content and keep track of your company. You just want to enter the content and not worry about the technical details of the web.
How can you update your website, like the pantip.com web board, where people enter their opinions, and their entries become available for all to see?
This can be achieved thanks to accumulated efforts in the development of content management systems (CMS).
CMS started out creating making little things possible, like web boards, guest books, stat counters, and so on. However, new-generation CMS takes the concept to a new level, enabling the site owner to install base CMS as the bare bones of the operation and install these applications as plug-ins. Some of the applications that CMS does are:
Portals. They allow you to set up accounts for each website user. For example, people who don't have an account can see five categories on your website, opposed to a corporate employee who may be able to see seven categories, including employee administration functions such as internal memos and vacation leave.
An executive may be able to see every category available, plus reports and analyses of operations. If the executives are in the office when they use the site, then implementing an Intranet may be useful for added security. If there isn't any sensitive content, portal accounts are quite sufficient. The design or themes of the website can also be altered with portals, to suit the users.
Blogs. Using the net we can move our personal diaries onto an online platform. A blog, which is short for weblog, allows users to open their own spaces for personal thoughts. It could be text-only, a text blog; with photos, a photoblog; from a cell phone, a moblog or mobile blog; a voice blog or a video-blog. Some business owners start blogs to promote their firms, allowing the visitors to comment on each posting. Many corporate developers have blogs that "leak" information about future products.
E-commerce. Several CMS models allow your company website to become your storefront to sell your product. The tricky part is the back end, interfacing with a credit card service provider. However, this could turn out to be as simple as copying some codes to put into your CMS. Ask your credit card service provider first which CMS it recognises.
Groupware. It is a good idea to keep track of all staff activities, meetings, documents and designs for projects online. Firstly, it keeps everyone working at the same pace. Each employee can see the whole project from the beginning. Second, if a new member starts or someone quits, the company will be able to retain what has been done to carry on working towards completion.
Forums. This is the web board mentioned earlier. The new generation of CMS allow users to set up categories, search, and keep a posting.
E-learning. For orientation or internal training you could develop e-learning classes to improve employee skills. E-Learning has well-structured content and guides students step-by-step.
Image galleries. Long gone are the days of film photography. Corporate events and personal photos can be kept for centuries online.
The good news is that most CMS have an open source, which means there is no need to pay for licences. If you are geeky enough you can even alter the source code to suit your needs.
There are more than 30 open source CMS on the web. Some are good, some are shoddy, but the more popular ones are PostNuke, Mambo, XOOPS. All of these are PHP based.
If your server uses a Microsoft language, try Rainbow which uses ASP.NET technology. For an enterprise with more complex requirements, try a commercial solution from Macromedia or Adobe.
With CMS, non-technical users can add content to sites just like they can using online banking or when they buy gifts online. It might be a little technical to install and to set up the server at the start, and you might need the help of someone more technically minded, but once it's up and running you and your staff can control the content, which is better than leaving a site static for years without an update.
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