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Modifying your website - when to contact your web developer

Having a Content Management System (CMS) installed on your website can be a really powerful and useful tool for website owners.  

Specifically for content that changes frequently (such as products, news and blogs), its critical that website owners can update this without refering back to the original developer / agency.

However it's important to understand that sometimes, changes to websites still need (or should) come back to the original web developer / agency (Thats why at TMD Online we use terms like "your CMS will be able to maintain 95% of your website").

Why cannot I do everything?

Short answer is, if you want to control everything on your website (and make it look good), a CMS cannot (and should not) do this.  At some stage you will need to dig into CSS, tweak some HTML code, or change backend code or database design.

Examples of things, that you should get your web developer to do:

  • Big "global" changes, e.g changing your logo in the header, large structural changes (e.g changing the height of the header).
  • Browsers render things differently.  If content is looking wierd in a different browser - your web developer needs to step in, and assist you with making this render consistently.
  • Your content looks ok in the CMS, but you think it needs improvement.  This is where you need professional advice, on how to present information best. 
  • Sometimes to make content look "great" involves complex code.  This may mean changes to this content at a later date, may need to go back to the original web developer / agency. Another option is a specific or structured module be written to control this content.
  • Any kinds of "interactions" involving "javascript" (Please do not paste javascript into your CMS, without first consulting your web developer - it can seriously break your site and could raise some security concerns)

At the end of the day there always certain circumstances where some changes need to go back to your web developer (for best user experience).   "Full Control" over content is doable but doing this can degrade user experience.