CMS

What it means

A CMS manages website content: text, images, articles and pages are edited through an admin screen without touching code. WordPress, Drupal and Joomla are the familiar names, usually open source.

A CMS separates content from appearance. One template renders hundreds of pages and a copy change needs no developer - which is the whole point of the thing for an ordinary company.

A CMS is sometimes confused with a hosted site builder, but the real difference is who owns the content and the data. With a self-installed CMS the database and files sit with the company or its hosting and can be moved. On a closed platform run as SaaS the site exists only while the subscription is paid, and moving away usually means manual work.

How it works in practice

For a company site a CMS is usually the cheapest route to regular updating, which is in turn a precondition for SEO. A site where nobody can add a page quickly stops being updated and slides down the results within a year.

There are three cost lines: hosting, template or design, and maintenance. Plugin and theme licences are booked as a service or as a licence, depending on the term.

For an online store on a CMS we work out the link to the books with the client: whether orders and invoices flow across automatically, how payments from the gateway are matched, and where the document comes from when goods are returned. The choice of CMS and plugins therefore also decides how much manual work the accountant faces each month.

What to watch out for

An unpatched CMS is the commonest route to a hacked site - old plugins carry published vulnerabilities. A valid SSL certificate and a backup you can actually restore from belong in the same list.

A website built on a CMS by an outside developer may be an intangible fixed asset if the price exceeds the threshold set for intangibles, in which case it is not expensed at once. One mistake is booking the whole invoice as a cost in the launch year; the other is a contract with no theme licence and no administrator access for the company.