Adding Features to Your CMS
Posted by Liz Gallagher on Wed, Feb 03, 2010 @ 07:00 AM
One of the wonderful things about a Content Management System is the ability to easily expand your web site with new pages and new features.
Once your web site is built on a CMS, the options are practically endless - especially if your CMS is Open Source, such as WordPress or Drupal. These are two of the open source Content Management Systems that I typically work with. Open Source means that the source code is available to the public and therefore developers from all over the world can expand on the functionality of the CMS by adding new features. These new features are called modules, widgets or plug-ins, which you can download and add to your own CMS web site.
For example, I am working with a client whose target market spans multiple industries and each industry has its own set of problems and situations. We recently moved this client's web site to a Drupal CMS and they would like to add Forums for each of their target customers. To develop something like this from scratch would be a large and costly undertaking. With Drupal, I just had to download and install the Forum module. Once the forum module is installed, you can begin to add your forums & topics. In this instance, I did do some customization to the look & feel of the forums before going live but it could be used right "out of the box."
The forums module is just one example of the many modules available for Drupal. WordPress is another great CMS that offers many plug-in modules and widgets for customizing your WordPress web site.
So beef up your web site. Use the power of your CMS to add a blog or a forum & start to interact with your customers. An interactive web site is likely to see more traffic because it keeps them coming back for more! Offering free advice in a blog or answering questions in a Forum increases your credibility and can help you to close the sale.