Content Management Systems Alter the way CPA Websites are Designed and Administered

Do you run your CPA website using a highly paid pro? Is your web site getting on in years and full of obsolete features and facts because you´re afraid of the cost and frustration involved with making changes to it?

Fast changes have been made to the way we develop and manage CPA sites. A decade ago the website design business was reliant on the "designer", a pricey and (usually) highly educated professional who was able to use code editors like Front Page and Dreamweaver and was familiar with new programming languages like ASP and PHP.

Well, stuff happens.

There is an astounding new technology called a "CMS", or "Content Management System that makes experts much less essential to the development and maintenance of most all straight forward websites. Don't misinterpret what I'm saying: these adept people are still eminent components of the web site design industry, but their purpose is shifting. To act as your own webmaster all you need is a casual familiarity with computers using this technique. The CMS, or "point and click web site editor", is basically just a consistent development of editing software that professional geeks have used for years. You can append and remove pages with it. All content management systems contain what is frequently called a "WYSIWYG" editor, , in point of fact, just a remarkably elementary word processor that allows you to modify pages. Don't be intimidated by the vernacular! WYSIWYG is only a nickname meaning "What You See is What You Get". It enables you to format your pages, upload pictures of all kinds, and fashion tables. By permitting you to make edits to the site's Navigation Menu you can also lay out a site's complete experience .

A CMS allows just about anybody to immediately and , without difficultly, do all the roles that took a trained designer hours to do scarcely years ago.

Almost every leading hosting provider of decent CPA sites offers a free or low-cost content management system with hosted sites.

Obviously the outstanding difference between a CMS and a custom website designer is cost. For most small CPA firms this is a big difference. Despite making make $25 or more an hour, most designers are normally not as motivated as you are to get your work done in a quick fashion. 30 days or longer is not an uncommon wait on professional website design jobs.

If these costs seem high to you brace yourself. These costs don't even include the cost of actually designing the site. It can often take 200 hours or more to design decent CPA sites from scratch. That means thousands of dollars spent and months of waiting. By constructing sites in advance and presenting menus of "ready-to-use" site templates CMS providers can get around this expense.

A number of site owners balk at using "templates" or already have unique sites that they have spent piles of money on and are content with, so loads of CMS providers are able to fine-tune their existing templates to better reflect your brand (if not outright duplicate your current website) quite inexpensively. This is a young technology, but it´s spreading rather fast.

Of course the challenge with sites built in this manner is that, while economical and straight forward to manage, they frequently lack substantive content. An entire side industry has been built encompassing the requirement for CPA focused content, so before racing off to any old website provider, do a Google search for "CPA sites".

In my opinion CPA Site Solutions is the best of these. For more than ten years they've made top-shelf CPA sites.

To find out what we are suggesting when we talk about "CPA specific content" take a good look at this video demonstration about accounting websites.

Make a note of the free reports, tax due dates, links to tax forms and publications, a portal for transferring accounting files, interactive financial calculators, email, and a host of similar tools chosen principally for site owners in the CPA industry. Maybe a head-hunter or business consultant could use a little of the tools on this website,but it would be a waste for a business like a retailer. A site like this is not meant to be worthwhile to a broad smorgasbord of concerns. It's essentially only intended for accounting and CPA firms.

For some big corporate CPA practices it´s worth the time and money of retaining professional designers, but for many small and medium sized firms, especially in these punishing economic times, it´s time to watch out for new solutions. Employing a CMS that specializes in CPA sites will reduce your costs and at the same time improve your hold over your site.