If you're thinking about hiring the services of a web design company, you might be told to look for a CMS, or Content Management System, as part of your solution. This is a smart idea.

While software tools like Front Page and Dreamweaver were the way site design was done in the past, that's not true anymore. In the case of older pages, all work was done by the design firm, which then used FTP to upload files to your server, letting your website go live right away.

The primary challenge to this was that whenever the client wanted to make any kind of change to the site, they needed to either know how to use the software, or they needed to hire the designer to do it for them. This applied to any change, from a few words to adding whole directories.

Unfortunately, hiring your designer every time you need to make a change or an update turns out to be really expensive. It's also very uncommon for a firm to be able to use Dreamweaver or similar programs to make internal changes.

Now, one of the more popular options is using a CMS as the basis of the website instead. However, not everyone knows what a CMS, much less why it's so much more popular than older methods of site building.

CMS, at its most basic, is a piece of web based software that offers full web design functionality for anyone from a novice to a trained developer. There are different CMS products out there, offering different kinds of functionality, but all of them offer WYSIWYG content development that's a lot like using a word processor, with simple editing methods that even the newest staff member can learn quickly.

The most advanced CMS offerings can be integrated with online sales, CRM facilities, product and stock management, e-learning, membership management, credit card processing and shipping utilities. In fact, those are only a few of the options available!

The real beauty of a CMS is the way it integrates all functions into a single system, making them available to any staff member who has the right access. That means that anyone on your staff could help by contributing new content or changing current content on the site - it's all done independently, and the web design company won't be charging your for their time.

Another great advantage of CMS use is that uploading files through FTP is no longer necessary. Since training end users to use an FTP program properly can be complex, this'll help you save money and time.

A CMS can be used by lots of different people, and since it's based on the web, those users could be spread across the globe. All that's needed to use the CMS is a browser, approved login, and access to the Internet.

This can really boost productivity, and you won't have to buy programs like Dreamweaver or Front Page for each staff member who needs to be able to change the site's content.

Since a CMS is built on a central database, it'll give you quite a few more benefits, too. This kind of searchable system separates form from function, letting you change the look and feel of your site without risk of loss of valuable data.

That central database also allows you to generate a number of different queries, and to represent information differently without building separate charts or tables by hand. All the information is in the system, and the CMS formats it the way you ask it to.

So, before you get involved with a design company, be sure you ask about their CMS products and arrange for a live demo. You'll soon see that these systems offer a lot of benefits over the old way of doing things.