Larger Web sites will find numerous advantages in building and maintaining their sites with an online content management system.

Media sites should be built on a CMS for several important reasons. A CMS will save staff time from coding pages, provide rich functionality such as search, display consistent templates that don’t confuse site visitors and make it much easier to implement changes that affect numerous pages.

We rebuilt the Virginia Press Association Web site on a content management system (CMS) called ExpressionEngine. The cost for a commercial license is $250.

Three types of CMS platforms are available: commercial, open source and customized. Commercial systems such as EE have fees ranging greatly depending on the size of the site, functional requirements, amount of technical support and other factors. Free, open-source CMS platforms including Drupal, Joomla and Zope come with no support other than community message boards. A custom system usually is built upon parts of other platforms, most often open source.

Here are some primary considerations in making a choice:

1. Price: balancing limited budgets with capabilities that grow audience and revenue

2. Technical support: staff versus outsourced

3. Training and documentation: strongest with commercial, weakest with open source

4. Usability: Is it intuitive or easy to use for staff with limited technical skills?

5. Productivity: Make sure the time savings in the long run exceed the effort needed to launch.

It is critically important to keep in mind that different online content management systems have different strengths and weaknesses.