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Originally Posted On: It’s time to run all your multiple websites from one CMS platform – District CMS

The problem: wasting time and money on multiple website back-ends

If you’re an organisation that’s above a certain size, you’re probably running multiple content management system (CMS) websites. Many local councils manage at least three or four sites, from their library to tourism sites, not to mention all of their internal and corporate sites and intranets. Naturally, more and more subsites develop over time like this.

Unfortunately, many of those organisations run their websites via multiple back-ends, and even multiple CMS platforms. They often don’t synchronise their content, and each site has vastly different website and administration experiences. This can be confusing, time-consuming and complex.

At best, it creates content silos and disconnected departments. At worst, it creates friction and inefficient workflows. And it’s not just inconvenient – it also puts you in a volatile position.

When it comes to publishing, the more control you have over who can publish content to your websites – the safer your organisation is from potentially embarrassing or harmful posts going live.

This situation isn’t uncommon

More often than not, this problem has evolved over time. New staff have arrived, and with them have come new ideas. Those new ideas get launched, which leads to adopting new solutions.

And alone, each platform and back-end probably works perfectly. But like anything else in life, your web solutions don’t exist in a vacuum. Nor does your organisation.

That’s why we developed the District Multisite-CMS solution – to help you roll all your separate websites into one unified CMS platform.

So you no longer need multiple CMS back-ends – and all the profiles, governance, management and administrative tasks that go with them – to run your various local government subsites. Instead, you can have just one. One login for each user, one platform to update and one entryway to all of your content.

And it’s not just for convenience. There can be a security risk with running multiple CMS frameworks, when you have just one CMS, patching, updates and other upkeep becomes easier and safer.

But most importantly, you can easily update, manage and control all of your public content from one single place.

What is a multi-site CMS solution?

Put simply, a multi-site CMS solution is a content management system that allows you to run multiple sites from one platform framework. This gives you greater control over your time, content and brand messaging than ever before.

A better strategy

Imagine controlling and updating all of your internal and external sites and intranets through one easy-to-use content management system.

District Multisite-CMS unifies your content production, governance and distribution through a single central platform.

We specifically developed it for this exact situation, with features that streamline:

• workflows
• platform administration and billing overheads
• common website admin
• content synchronisation, and more.

But at a higher level, these features can also elevate your record management and compliance with state and federal record-keeping legislation.

And each site has an independent database and configuration settings. This not only provides full flexibility over each website’s look and functionality but also allows you to control who can access the data it holds.

Individualised branding to maintain site identity

Many organisations with multiple websites actively try to separate their departments and services with individualised front-end (public interface) branding. Perhaps your local business directory front-end looks and feels completely different to your local events calendar, and so on.

And while, yes, each site has its own branding, and maybe even needs different functionality – they often come with multiple back-ends – which can be a logistical nightmare. Often, this has developed organically as different departments have developed each site.

This is why District Multisite-CMS allows you to customise each site’s front-end individually, while still managing them all on the same CMS platform. We offer carefully curated, audited and customised modules to improve your administration experience, separate out brands and help them to function in unison.

The design of each District Multi-site website is fully customisable.

Template-driven to save you time

District Multi-site CMS includes a growing number of website templates with a range of existing themes, including a tourism and library website format. We developed each one to address the specific requirements of different departments. We also ensured they were all highly configurable, creating a simple, cost-effective way to build, design and launch new websites.

Synchronised posting to multiple websites for efficiency

2020 taught us the importance of quick updates. Rolling coverage of the pandemic sometimes changed guidelines daily, and content managers scrambled to keep their communications relevant and up to date.

Unfortunately, multiple back-ends made this process time-consuming and admin-heavy. If organisations had run all their sites through a single platform, they could have created one quick, efficient edit and pushed it out to every site.

But even in non-pandemic life, the ability to instantly synchronise new announcement posts or site-wide alerts, frees up precious admin time for more important things. It also gives you the ability to quickly update, pull or publish certain content.

Better security to increase compliance

When you’re a government organisation, security and platform maintenance are top-priority. They’re essential for everything from holding personal information to being able to reliably update constituents in a crisis.

Under our SaaS offering, we maintain the ongoing platform and infrastructure security maintenance to ensure we protect your data and comply with record-keeping policies.

Single sign-on to make website administrators’ jobs easier

On the surface level, a single sign-on CMS means that your staff will only have to remember one password. That’s convenient and cuts down on the password losses that are not only time-consuming and frustrating, but also expensive. One study by the Gartner Group found that each time a staff member needs to reset their password, it can cost the organisation $US70.

On a higher level, though, single sign-ons make your job of governing global content workflows and user permissions much simpler and safer. Managing permissions rigorously is essential, especially when your staff have access to personal data and the ability to publish to official websites.

Less training required for quicker uptake

In a large organisation where staff are often promoted from within, the benefits of running an omnichannel user experience include easier training and smoother transitions.

Even for new staff, training becomes much less complex when all websites use common admin tools. In a fast-paced environment, especially one with a high turnover rate, getting everyone up to speed and keeping them there is hugely important.

Global updates to keep pace with changing conditions

As technology and legislation change, so too should your websites. CMS content synchronisation lets you introduce new features in one place and then update automatically to all of your council subsites.

Our list of CMS features and third-party integrations is constantly growing. We know that continual innovation is necessary, so we’ve built it into the system. And because District Multisite-CMS is based on an open-source Drupal platform, we can specifically develop websites and custom integrations for your organisation

Future-proof your growth: book a guided demo today!

Unlike other new solutions on the market, District Multisite-CMS is part of a suite of open source-based solutions, District CMS, that we’ve created specifically for government organisations.

So, when you’re ready to explore an engagement platform, smart forms, an intranet or a content management hub, your CMS will work perfectly in unison with them.

Let us take you through the platform and show you exactly how it can make your multi-site management more streamlined, compliant and secure.