The Type Of Content Management System (CMS) We Need to Grow Our Online Business; Control & Flexibility

If you don't have the right content management system (CMS) for your website it'll cost you time, money, and frustration in the future. I've worked with countless CMS systems over the last two decades and I've seen the good bad and ugly. 

If there are things you want to do with your website but cannot, you know what I'm talking about.

I've got a client who is trapped in their archaic CMS. Their dreams and vision for the website helping to grow their business, are all held hostage. My mission with this client is to launch a new website from a better foundation; in this case, Joomla. With this upgrade, they can easily do the things they could not.

Having a flexible system that gives you control over your content and the ability to launch new pages with powerful designs, is critical for long-term success and preventing compound friction from insufficient systems or lacking frameworks.

Usually, what happens is that the chosen CMS worked for a season, but it failed to keep up with the changing times (in contrast with other systems that did innovate and evolve).

An Insufficient Content Management System (CMS)

As I publish this, I'm on the other side of this CMS challenge with my Path of the Freelancer website. It was on an older version of Joomla (3) and an older version of the YOOtheme framework. There were multiple potholes I overcame so that I could get it updated. This past week, I successfully made the migration and the site is now on Joomla 5.

With my 2025 goal of building a passive income from my content creation business, I worked through the friction points to prepare the website for the upgrades so that it gives me the control I need to upgrade the systems and update the content to reach my goals. There were some site functions I wanted to eliminate (like the freelancer directory) since it was too much to manage with little benefit.

Some outdated widgets needed to be transitioned. For example? I've had the Freelancer toolbox page with a wall of tools and filters for freelancers. This page never got traction on Google so I've migrated all the categories into individual blog posts with those tools listed. This approach will more likely get Google traffic while making it easier to update the content with new tools and changes. And based on the analytics so far, that seems to be the case.

The old version of YOOtheme also heavily relied on module positions in Joomla. With the new YOOtheme Pro Builder, these are no longer as necessary so I've migrated this old structured content into the updated system.

What's awesome about being on Joomla and using YOOtheme is that I was able to install the new Pro Builder and selectively use the theme on certain sections and pages as I worked through the upgrades. This was great because it allowed me to transition the site while it was live. If it was on a different CMS this would not have been possible. I would have had to build the new site in its entirety and then launch it. By being able to transition, I was able to work on it live and those benefits were realized in real-time by users and Google's indexing of the updates.

One other function I'm intentionally leaning into is Joomla's built-in banner system. These are blocks placed throughout the site that allow me to run banner ads for sponsors, affiliate products, and content I want to emphasize. This will be one of the ways I generate passive income from my internet platform and something I'm also doing on this website as well.

Lacking Content Frameworks

Regardless of how awesome your content management system is, and Joomla is incredible, it's always going to be limited by your content strategy. The earlier you can figure out your content structure, the better it is going to be for optimizing and maintaining it going forward.

When I started this blog I didn't have that framework, but I eventually developed a structure several years in, after reflecting on the patterns of my publishing. Here are the categories I discovered.

• Grow yourself
• Grow your business
• Grow others
• Get inspired

Those became my four core pillars of content with my existing subcategories inside of one of them. If you navigate through the menu, you'll notice this taxonomy guides my content structure.

You'll also notice that my menu is missing some of the sub-categories. The reason for this is that I've not yet moved all of the content into this structure fully. While Joomla gives me the control and flexibility to make this shift with minimal friction, I've got to migrate a few technical details to make it happen.

For example, there is an obstacle with my evergreen social media sharing that uses the old URL structure. That will have to be updated. For the website, this change resistance comes down to the URL structure of the categories, subcategories, and articles themselves. Placing each of my orphan categories into my new content structure will change the URLs of those articles. In the long term, that is a good thing and what I want as part of my optimization process.

When I do this, and I want to transition as smoothly as possible while maximizing the SEO benefits and minimizing the downsides, I'll want to set up 301 redirects for all these URL changes. With hundreds of URLs, this can be time-consuming. Using a wildcard-type redirect can certainly diminish the amount of time required to accomplish this task.

So, I've been spending the time to work through this process and get my content in its proper place. This has involved fleshing out some subcategories and figuring out what I want to make categories and what I want to simply make as tags. I see tags as a way to organize content across categories and as a way to sample potential future categories.

Once I get my content fully migrated into the content structure, all new content will automatically be placed inside of it. This is why the transition is harder over time and why it's better to define your content taxonomy as early as possible.

Applying the 5-Step Process For Upgrading To A Well-Oiled Machine

1. Tackle low-hanging fruit. Knock out the low-effort high-impact stuff.
2. Simplify everything. Like my freelance directory going away, I'm getting rid of things that are not contributing to my desired outcome. 
3. Make what's left better. Everything that survives the cut is improved.
4. Identify and fill the gaps. Once I've optimized things, I can look for other opportunities to make things better.
5. Master maintenance. This comes down to keeping things up to date and creating new content with a checklist that follows everything and keeps it as close to optimized as possible from the beginning so that later we don't have to make big changes.

That process is the guiding framework for how I'm tackling my projects, including the content management on my websites.

Wrapping Up

Your key takeaways here are an encouragement to choose a content management system that will give you control and stay updated with the changing context of the online world. And, it's also an encouragement to plan out your overarching content-organizing taxonomy as early as possible. Lastly, I wanted to inspire you that even if you've not done these things, there's a way to transition while minimizing the downsides and maximizing the upsides with the 5 stage transition process.

If you want assistance with any of these layers, send me a message, and let's chat.

As I work through this process on my two websites, I can feel the friction of what's holding me back from growing my influence and income. I'm motivated to knock down these walls so I can take steps forward to grow my business. With Path of the Freelancer, I launched that website in 2017 when the book was published and I've learned so much in the previous seven years working with my clients and on my stuff. And I'm excited to apply these insights in this next chapter.