Why do you need a CMS? Because you can.

I could also give you a wrench and tell you to maintain your car-because you can-but you probably wouldn’t. You’ll take it to a mechanic.

I could give you a scalpel and tell you exactly where to cut to remove that tumor-because you can-but you won’t.

I could even give you something like Microsoft Publisher and tell you to go ahead and make a brochure for your company-because you can. But it would look awful, and you know it.

But when it comes to the web, it’s: “I have to have a CMS!” or “I know I need a CMS.” or how about this one: “My husband’s in marketing and he told me I need a CMS-this much I know.”

This just in: for 98% of you, you don’t need a CMS. Why?

1. You are so busy managing your business, you don’t have time to manage your site. It’s more economical for a web developer to make a change for you.
2. Because it’s not half as easy as it looks.
3. You paid thousands of dollars for your web site, and once you start messing with it, you’re going to wreck the design.

A CMS for most businesses is like the bread machine you received for your wedding. Where is it now? Exactly.

Trust me, you don’t NEED a CMS. But here are some examples of content that may make sense for you to have the ability to manage:

• Update the News Section of your site.
• Update Job Postings
• Maintain an Events Calendar

So, in deference to all of the CMS wanters and providers out there, I meet you in the middle-if you’re willing to come that far. A site wide CMS that allows one to edit any and all pages, create new sections of the site, etc. sounds all fine and dandy until you either a) find out you’ll never use it or b) discover that you wrecked your site’s design after say, 2 months of changing content.

However, for those functions that require constant updating and actually require a reason for editing functionality (such as maintaining an events calendar or updating job postings) specific web tools to manage your content totally makes sense.

Oh, and hey, Merge provides a CMS solution if you need one…we usually don’t recommend them to prospects. We don’t recommend holes in their heads either.