When I first entered the design industry, I thought that graphic designers who said disparaging things about word processors for  document layout were snobs. I now know better.

Having lived through more than one 'I can do it myself, I just need you to print it' project, I can attest that word processors are not appropriate tool for professional document layout, no matter what their makers claim.

Hopefully you hired a professional to create a great website. Good for you if you did! But now your site needs to be updated. Ugh! To bring that web professional back every time the site needs revision seems just too much, yet an outdated website isn't good either. And you're not about to do it yourself, even if you knew how. You want to focus on what you're good at.

Thanks to a web technology known as a content management system (CMS for short) you could update your website on the fly. With a CMS, simply go to your website and log in to a password protected admin area. From there, you can add articles, fix that typo that everybody missed in the proofread, update your hours - any part of the content can be managed - without any knowledge of coding. Content management systems are not that new, but they are more accessible thanks to excellent ones now available for free download and installation. In a conventional site, each page is a file written in HTML code. With a CMS, your site's content is stored in a database of images and text and a script displays the content within a template.

You still need to hire a professional to design and create the site template. That professional will, at the least, create the look and feel of your site and set up the navigation so it's easy for visitors to use. Once the foundation has been laid and the site is set up, you can do that quick update yourself whenever it's needed. Even if you don't want to be burdened with maintaining your website, a CMS can easily add functionality to your site. Remember, too, that search engines like web sites that change frequently.