Easy Content Management for Small and Medium Websites with CMSMS

Not every website requires all the bells and whistles that would come with a robust content management system like Drupal or Joomla. The complexity of many of the open source CMS options is an issue that has plagued many beginner web designers. On one hand, the heavier duty CMSes allow you to have a stunning variety of different plugins and add-ons to facilitate everything from complex shopping carts and record keeping to integrating your own social network into your website. However, the deluge of possibilities in the core system combined with free and paid additions not only makes the design process overwhelming for those not used to the system, but it also adds a second level of learning where you must keep track of the latest updates for each of those additions and deal with parts of your website breaking due to small snafus in the code.

CMS Made Simple provides an alternative to the weighty management systems. It was designed with the goal of serving the needs of small and medium sized websites without the clutter of too many stock features. Whether you're just making a personal website, a website for an organization, or a website for a small business, CMS Made Simple will help you develop a simple website with very little knowledge.

Positive Aspects of CMS Made Simple

CMS Made Simple is an open source CMS written in PHP that is licensed under the GPL, which means that it comes at a very attractive price point (free) and it can be used for personal and commercial websites without incurring any other costs. For advanced users, the open source nature of the CMS will allow you to make modifications to the code to customize the functionality of your site. New users will benefit from the many sets of eyes across the world that will, most likely, see bugs and security flaws in the code before it becomes a problem for you, and a patch will soon after be available to fix the problem.

In the admin panel, you're able to adjust user permissions, change themes, install add-ons, and edit the content of pages in an easy WYSIWYG editor. The panel was designed to be a simple, intuitive interface where new web designers can hop in and get started immediately with their content while experienced web developers will have a lean, bare-bones CMS to which they can add only the features they require.

The CMS Made Simple community is well established, so those seeking help for installing and using plugins are able to use one of the major forums dedicated to CMS Made Simple. If you are just making a simple website with the stock features of CMS Made Simple, there is a built-in help system that will help you get started and provides examples of different websites for you to draw inspiration from.

Drawbacks of CMS Made Simple

When building a website, you want to use the right tool for the job. CMS Made Simple was made for people who want to build small, relatively simple websites quickly. An experienced user can create a basic website in approximately five minutes. However, this CMS does not lend itself to websites that will have over a thousand pages. The user interface is optimized to allow quick access to a few pages, so once you're over a certain limit, it becomes cumbersome to manage them all. That's not to say CMS Made Simple is incapable of handling large websites, but there are far better tools for that job. Third party plugins are the usual culprit in security flaws and the breaking of a website, and since CMS Made Simple is one of the more bare-bones CMSes, the functionality you would need for a large or complex website would require a lot of those plugins.

That said, it is a fantastic option for those seeking something light weight and easy to use to create their personal or small business website.

• Choosing the Right CMS – A Make or Break Decision
• 7 Simple CMS Solutions For Quick Website Creation
• Users and Developers of CMS Made Simple Converge on Amsterdam Starting on 15 September