If a site goes up on the web, but there’s no one there to see it, does it make any money?

Just because you have a stop on the information superhighway, that doesn’t mean the right people will visit it. Just because you build it, that doesn’t mean they’ll come. You need to get traffic to your website. And not just any traffic, but the right traffic.

For the most elaborate websites, you should consider a content-management system, or CMS. That’s a mouthful, but it only means software that lets you manage your website content. A good content-management system will let you do everything WordPress can do, and more. A CMS is more general than a blog. The main purpose of a blog is to let you post content day by day, as in a news feed. A CMS can do this, but it can also handle other content, displaying it in a number of ways.

One way to let the computer manage content is using blog software. This software lets you publish articles, day by day as in a news feed. Users can then subscribe to your site’s feed, and as you write new articles, your website automatically notifies each subscriber. Additionally, any articles you’ve already written remain on the site for as long as you want, organized by whatever categories you specify.

The simplest kind of site is a mini-site, a small, laser-focused site, usually with only a few pages. These are a great way to advertise a niche product or service. Or to promote a special offer or event. You can manage a mini-site manually, using HTML templates. That’s because a well-designed mini-site usually has only one main page, perhaps with a few variations. Everything on the site has only one purpose, to ask the visitor to make a decision whether to take the next step in a relationship with your company. Note that this is not how most companies organize their websites.

There are 3 common kinds of systems website owners use to manage the content on their sites. Some are more powerful and more flexible, but also require more effort to setup and maintain. Which system is right for you depends on what kind of web site you need.