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Why Use A Custom CMS?

by | Nov 29, 2013 | Articles, Web Design, Web Development | 2 comments

custom cms

We build every website with our own content management system (CMS). Our custom CMS is called Fuse, and is one of the easiest to use out there today. First, a CMS is used for adding, changing, and deleting content to a website. A custom CMS can also be used to create a more productive work environment and a more centralized maintenance interface. Our CMS (Fuse) allows you to easily update any content and imagery to your page, while being able to navigate smoothly and effectively. There is a whole lot of competition in our field because everyone claims to have the best CMS interface out there for clients to use. Arguably the most popular is WordPress. WordPress is mostly for blogging, but has the capabilities to run websites. It’s popular because it’s open source and has numerous plugins to choose from. However, WordPress is not always the best choice for your company; in fact, it more than likely isn’t! So why use a custom CMS?

Custom CMS Interface vs. Open Source

Our custom CMS, Fuse, is extremely reliable and easy to navigate through. When you get a custom CMS, you get what you asked for: customization. When something is customized, it is tailored to you, or in this case to your company’s website. Fuse is engineered to match most any website on the Web because it does your work for you. It’s designed to keep your website up-to-date for web marketing, user experience, and to let it grow. In a custom CMS, you can make your site do exactly what you want, how you want. The interface of Fuse is easy to use and navigate because we made the CMS to save you time from messing around with your site. Your time is valuable; you should be busy running your business or advertising it. If you need something done on your website, you should be able to do it quickly, efficiently, and most of all uniquely.

Bloated Code

Sites like WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, and other open source CMS applications use pre-programmed code to build your site. Fuse uses much less coding because we don’t have extra features you’re not going to use. This is the same with any custom CMS with code bloating in mind. WordPress pulls its data from so many databases you wouldn’t want to try to start counting! There needs to be code for these calls, and the common term for code like this is “bloated code.” It’s a waste of space, and in the end it’s a waste of time to write this code. When the time comes to debug your website, as it always does, you need to be able to find and fix the problem quickly. Bloated code makes this a painstakingly long, drawn-out process of reading seemingly endless lines of code that you’re not even sure are necessary. This means the problem persists until the person looking for the code finds it and addresses it. As for the performance of your website from a visitor’s point of view, it’s much more efficient to have a small and concise site. Less coding means less loading times, and we all love fast websites!

Security

Next up (and possibly the most important) we have security. It’s a fact of the Internet that it is virtually impossible to make something “unhackable”. The question is: are you the target of someone capable of it? WordPress sites are particularly targeted because it is the world’s most used CMS system. This results in hackers, spammers, and scammers trying to exploit your website, your company, and you. Our custom content management systems are not targeted, and we do not post our source code on the Web for all to see, analyze, and exploit. Everything about WordPress, including the plugins, is open source; this is the main attraction. Basically, hackers will download popular plugins, find security vulnerabilities, and then use them on live sites. If there is a security vulnerability found in our CMS, we can find it and update faster than any WordPress issue.

Plugins, Plugins, and More Plugins!

Remember the saying “there’s an app for that”? Well, there’s a plugin for it too. It’s true that there are plugins for everything, such as SEO and contact forms; however, these plugins are open source and require support to run properly. Who is going to support this plugin? Who makes the changes? These are only two questions you’ll be asking when the time comes to fix something in your plugin, like a broken field. In an open source CMS such as WP you have the ability to download plugins, but do not have the ability to alter them. You can suggest making changes to the developer if you want, or if you have a custom CMS, you can go to your designer and tell them what you want and have it done that day. Plugins are convenient: quick and easy to install. But a custom CMS like Fuse can be easier to use, maintain, and you’ll spend less time messing with it than you will a plugin. Just because it says it does something, doesn’t mean it will work. You’ll need some configurations and settings changed every time you want to do something slightly different, and this can get frustrating. Our CMS allows anyone to make changes to features on the spot, without affecting the other features.

Conclusion

An open source CMS has popularity and a lot of plugins. Here’s the breakdown:

  • A custom CMS has less bloated code, resulting in slightly faster load speeds.
  • A custom CMS is more secure than an open source CMS.
  • An open source CMS is faster to setup and install.
  • A custom CMS is easier to use, faster to get things done.
  • Support for a custom CMS will be much more responsive and effective than open source.

Specifically to our custom CMS, we will train you on how to use our system so that even after our time together is finished, you can update and manage your website accordingly!

Ryan Gavin is an associate with Ignition72, a web design agency. He writes on a variety of topics including web design, web security, and general website questions.

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