Are all websites cms?

**behzad** · 17 January 2017, 11:29 PM

Just coming to the realization that clients or prospects are fully aware that with a cms platform they can do their own update. Even if they can not update their own, they can look for a cheap wordpress or other cms users that can help pop in a plugin or two. This has happened on a few occasions to me when a clients says that they want to update their own site after it was finished. Now I know that xara cloud does that but the sheer number of people out there who have used wordpress are not comparable to people who know xara cloud.

I have come to a point where I can see xara as a quick turnaround for simple sites but not for anything like mentioned above. How do you tell a client that their website done in xara is not what a wordpress can do? I think now everyone who has a website designed by developers assumes that we are using a cms platform. To tell them otherwise is unacceptable these days. What is your view on this?

**Egg Bramhill** · 18 January 2017, 03:40 AM

No, not all sites are CMS Behzad. CMS sites are served up via databases.

Clients always want content they can edit. Ask them if they want this option and 100% will say yes. The important issue is 'are they capable / have the time to do so' ? In my experience the vast majority are not capable of doing so or if they are they don't have the time to do so.

Xara Cloud is useful, not difficult for a client to learn (no more so than CMS). Another option is XT-CMS (see link below)

CMS sites tend to be template led. So unless you have software like Artisteer to create your own they can all end up looking like blogs.

Steer your clients away from self editing, offer a service to do it for them at a resonable price. You create the site and get paid for doing so. You can then offer a service to maintain the site on a fixed or 'on edit' basis and continue earning income.

http://www.xt-cms.com/

**behzad** · 18 January 2017, 12:53 PM

Egg those are some excellent points. I totally agree with clients messing up cms and have had that kind of experience myself. In this case the client said we want to take the site to the next level (cms) so that they could put in their own media/slides, etc.... What they completely miss out is the fact that it takes design knowledge and technical skills to do this. A few of my clients websites looked so bad from my initial design that I had to either not showcase it in my portfolio or to host a copy to my own server (with google crawlers blocked).

**Ericiscooler** · 18 January 2017, 04:25 PM

Every website is run on a CMS unless you hand coded it using Dreamweaver or other HTML editor. As far as checking if a website is based on Wordpress or other CMS? There are actually these online 'checkers' that can help you determine that. Simply type in 'What CMS is this' on Google and you'll see a whole bunch of options. Then simply type in the name of the website and it will tell you the CMS of a website. If it's using one.