There are many difficult and daunting tasks to creating and managing a website, especially when doing it alone. As the site grows, the tasks become more complex and there will be more of them. At this point, having a group of employees to assist with the day-to-day functions can be a blessing. Most large sites are crafted and maintained by a group of people, not just one.

These large-scale sites cannot be implemented properly without a content management system on the backend. There are three primary areas where content management systems can help you manage the whole site (including your employees). These include:

• Control employee access
• Upload content
• Delegating work

For a group of workers, they will need a way to access the website with special permissions due to their role with the company. It is always a good idea to limit various employees’ power so they don’t have too much access. This can easily become a security risk. With a quality CMS you can enter permissions, assign tasks and create restrictions which improves organization, security and limits micromanaging allowing for a more productive worker.

Although employees will have limited access, it is in your best interest to let them upload unique and original content as they create it. Uploading the content yourself all at once can be an extremely daunting and time-consuming task. By allowing team members to complete this task, you can save several hours each day. This time could be allocated towards completing more important tasks.

Utilizing your employees to their maximum ability by keeping them busy is important for the proper functioning of any website and to maximize productivity. Telecommunication delays can be filled by a content management system. Many systems allow the administrator to communicate with their team members through a private messaging system. This gives the webmaster complete control and instant communication during a project.

Controlling employee access, allowing employees to upload content and delegating work is three of the most important aspects of running a large, successful website. There is so much work to complete that cannot be done by a single webmaster. As a result content management systems have great support and overall features.

The development and ease of content management systems has been a blessing for many administrators. As technology improves, administrators will have an easier time managing their site and employees.

There are many different developer certifications available. To add to the long list is a .NET web content management system certificate offered by Kentico. This will certify its graduates as CMS technology experts.

While there are many vendors that offer CMS certifications, Kentico is the most recent. The basics of the course include:

• Upon completion, the result is a Kentico Certified Developer
• One year of Kentico CMS development experience is required or completion of Kentico CMS 5 Certified Developer Training
• Demonstration of the understanding of ASP.NET, the .NET framework, web interfaces, CSS and website deployment are scrutinized

The exam for the certification is 50 questions an available anytime online for $199. The long debate over whether certifications immediately make someone an expert continues. There are plenty of good developers that didn’t pass certification exams. They are still experts; they just don’t have a certification document proving this fact.

Many believe that time and money is better spent on Microsoft certifications as their courses tend to cover more information and different types of vendors. Unfortunately most experts believe that a non-committed or poor developer that obtains a certification will weaken the whole system.

Kentico is adding to the certification list to provide a quick and easy method to recognize highly-skilled developers. They claim the return on investment is maximized and time to market is reduced through their certification course.

The Kentico CMS certification course is a partner of Microsoft. This proves their conformance with Microsoft testing protocols such as Microsoft Platform Test for Windows Server 2003, Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Test and Microsoft Managed Code Test.

There are two types of courses offered by Kentico: the Certified Content Administrator Training and the Certified Developer Training. The administrative training instructs students on how to use Kentico CMS 5 to create and publish content. It also teaches users how to perform their daily tasks utilizing this software. The developer training focuses on speedy website deployments, best programming and design practices, as well as showcasing the capabilities of the Kentico CMS.

Kentico is providing another addition to the list of vendor certifications by offering an administrative and developer training. These courses teach all aspects of the Kentico Content Management System to the users. This is helpful with daily tasks as well as following good design and practices. Any additional courses do add credibility to your workplace experience and this is no exception.

Content management systems have become an integral part of a webmaster’s daily duties, simplifying the process of managing and operating a website within a centralized user-friendly interface. Before content management systems website owners had to have training in HTML, PHP and CSS in order to create, organize and upload web pages manually.

Fortunately, with the advent of CMS like WordPress and Drupal, webmasters can now create and manage stunning websites with little or no web development experience. The two aforementioned content management systems are the best in the industry, but which is the crowd favorite?

WordPress

In terms of popularity, WordPress is leaps and bounds above all competitors. Originally designed as a blogging platform, WordPress has grown into an extremely useful content management system over the past few years. The strong point of WordPress is the abundance of plugins that have been designed by independent developers. Literally every aspect of site creation, organization and search engine optimization can be dealt with using WordPress plugins. These plugins are basically additions to the CMS, which enhance the functionality of the user interface.

With hundreds of WordPress plugins available, and new ones being created each day, it is easy to see why WordPress is easily the crowd favorite. Many people find it difficult to find the right plugins to simplify a specific task. Fortunately there is a large WordPress community that can offer advice on which plugins to use and how to use the WordPress content management system properly.

Drupal

Drupal is a unique advanced content management system that gives the user complete control over the development of a site. Unlike other CMS which utilize WYSIWYG editors and simplified interfaces, Drupal is made specifically for web developers. In fact, it is said that Drupal is actually more of a development platform than a simple CMS. Even though Drupal is not very user-friendly, it is perfect for professional web developers that need full control over scripting and advanced site design. One of the strong points of Drupal is the massive user community full of professional web developers that are constantly sharing advice and tips on how to use Drupal. When used correctly, Drupal can create the best websites on the internet, and due to its advanced capabilities there are very few limitations.

Conclusion

Both content management systems have their own pros and cons, however WordPress is generally seen as being the best choice for novice webmaster. More advanced web developers should consider Drupal, as it offers freedom and control not seen in any other CMS. Many webmasters use both Drupal and WordPress, depending upon their needs for a particular website. The limitations of both content management systems depend entirely upon the user’s experience and resources. With the right plugins WordPress can beat just about any CMS in existence. However, when utilized by the right developer Drupal can create sites that WordPress cannot even manage! Ultimately, the decision is left to the webmaster, their experience level, and their needs.

Content management systems have changed a lot in recent years, transitioning from being simple blogging systems to comprehensive site management utilities use by webmasters around the world. The need for convenience has ultimately led to the development of content management systems that are capable of doing almost everything one could ask for, including but not limited to site organization, maintenance, and optimization. However, every content management system has it’s limits, but thanks to open source code and willing developers these limits are gradually fading through the use of plugins that make the capabilities of content management systems seemingly endless. When it comes to content management systems there is one that stands above the rest in regards to expandability – WordPress.

Analyzing Your Needs

The first thing you’ll notice when operating WordPress initially is that there are many features that are lacking or simply not convenient enough to make a significant difference in your daily productivity. As you browse through the control interface you’ll notice that you’re limited in creative control. For example, when posting content you cannot easily modify font or formatting by default.

Fortunately there is a plugin available called Super Editor that will amend the content management system so that there are options to change text size and font with ease. To get the most out of your content management system you’ll want to browse through the control interface taking note of any limitations you would like to eliminate. There is a good chance that there are plugins available that can greatly improve the features you need.

Finding Plugins

Once you’ve got an idea of what is needed you can begin searching through the plugin database. To do this, click on “Add New” in the plugin module on the left side of the interface. From there you can enter a query in the search box that appears. You can refer to the star rating and description to get a good idea of the capabilities and quality of each plugin. Many times there are plugins that are not in the official WordPress database, but that need to be found using a search engine such as Google. You can also learn a lot from the WordPress forums as well, where there are experienced members willing to lend advice. You can ask a question at any time and receive an answer in just a few hours.

Essential Plugins

When it comes to improving the productivity of your online business, simplifying search engine optimization and site organization is imperative. The All-in-One SEO pack is a prime example of an essential plugin that aids in search engine optimization. The Google sitemap generator plugin is also essential as well. For site organization, plugins like StickyPostOrderer, Date Exclusion, Category Pages, Exclude from Navigation, and Open in New Window are absolutely essential.

Content management systems are robust administrative platforms, used to build and operate websites ranging from small personal blogs to large corporate online headquarters. One of the most popular content management systems (WordPress) started as a blogging platform, and quickly grew into a comprehensive CMS used around the world.

Today, WordPress is used to manage many kinds of websites including multimedia sites and online shops. It is also still used by many to blog about their everyday lives and current world events.

Why is There a Date by Every Post?

As mentioned before, WordPress is actually a blogging platform. Blogs consist of posts that are organized into categories and are basically online journals. When a new post is published on a blog it is moved to the top of the home page, and every post includes a time/date that the post was published. However, many people do not want the date to show up on their WordPress blog for each post, as this may provide insight to the actual age of the site, and a new site is generally seen as being “unprofessional” in the online industry. This is especially true for site owners that want to create static sites that remain the same and are not changed in structure by the latest posts. The following methods will let you remove the date from your posts and pages.

Date Exclusion Plugin

The date exclusion plugin will automatically remove the parts of your WordPress theme that contain the date, by scanning through the files of the theme and find all instances of specific code snippets. This plugin is very convenient and easy to use, and can be programmed to exclude the date on a post by post basis, or on a site-wide basis. Unfortunately, this plugin will not work for all themes, and some themes may require manual removal of the time and date code snippets.

Removing the Code Snippets Manually

If the above plugin did not work, then you can use the following method to manually remove the time and date code snippets from your theme. You will need to use a program that can search through multiple files in a folder, like PR Grep. Using this program you can find all instances of “the_time” and “the_date.” Once you know which files the code is in, you can go in and remove the snippets from the theme individually. You can also use a Multiple Find and Replace program to replace all instances of these codes with a blank space within your theme folder.

Conclusion

Having the ability to remove the date and time from your post will let you create the illusion that your site is older and more established than it really is. Anyone building a professional business site should consider using these steps to remove the time and date of their site publishing. By leaving the date in tact you are giving your site visitors an open book of your posting activities, and this transparency could lead to a lack of trust and confidence.