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Grav developer based in Cornwall - fast, secure, with website backups as standard
The Grav content management system is an award winning CMS which focuses on ease of use, speed and ensuring your content is easily accessible and portable (i.e. easily moved from one host to another). Grav is part of the ‘flat file’ content management system revolution. It doesn’t use a database for housing your content, like other well-known systems, and this removes many issues including - the speed with which your site performs, less gateways for hackers to attack your site and is easily backed-up as-well-as rolled back to previous versions using version control.
As Grav developers but with experience in other systems we would highly recommend the Grav content management system - it is suitable for small and medium sized websites, i.e. up to hundreds of pages. If you are managing sites with thousands of pages then we would discuss other systems with you. We’re based in Cornwall but we’re happy to work with you wherever you may be.
Why would we recommend the Grav content management system?
Higher performance
The Grav content management system doesn’t use a database to store your content and therefore it out-performs websites that use databases. This is because your pages don’t exist, as such, with a database driven website. With a database driven website when a visitor visits your web page the system kicks into action and starts to connect and communicate with the database to start building the webpage - it pulls in the header, navigation, footer and eventually the content that you have created which has all been stored in or referenced in the database. This all takes computer memory and therefore time. Performance is considered a variable that Google looks at as part of where your web pages appear in the search engine results and therefore you should be considering performance as a key part of your website strategy.
In most markets you’ll be experiencing a level of competition whether it be high, moderate or low. In Cornwall, for example, targeting visitors to the County for accommodation is a very competitive arena with a high density of competitors all chasing the visitor pound. If your website has a very similar level and quality of content as your competitors then your position in the search engines could boil down to how well your site performs from a speed point of view. With identical levels of content then Grav will certainly outperform database driven websites.
As professional developers it’s our role to guide you to a high performance CMS such as the Grav content management system.
Content is king
Quality content is a key factor in succeeding with Google, many businesses are moving their budgets from advertising to creating content that will position their businesses as the goto place for their type of products and services. Grav ensures that your content is always easily accessible, as essentially your content is a collection of files - as they would appear in a directory on your computer. This is a very different approach to a database driven website where your content is stored in a database, which makes it difficult to access and transfer to new sites without a developer to support you. If you are considering investing in your website’s content then naturally you want to ensure that the content outlasts the content management system so with any new sites the migration of your content is straightforward. As a Grav developer but with experience of other systems we’d recommend that Grav is an ideal solution for managing your content for the long-term.
Protecting your content
The very nature of the flat file system that Grav uses means it is extremely good at preserving your content. It can be easily backed-up by a click of a button and also version controlled by connecting your site with a remote repository (such as GitHub). This also means that the complete system is very portable. Moving a database driven from one host to another can be a complex task but with Grav it is simply a matter of copying the files over. Not satisfied with your hosting, easy, move it to a new host with the minimum of fuss.
Creating quality content is not cheap, it can be a considerable investment for you. Using our earlier example of a Cornwall based business targeting visitors to the County. You may well have built up a series of articles about things to do in Cornwall. With a database system these files are stored in the database, it is not that straight-forward to access them. As a Grav developer we love the way you can simply backup all your site with one click of a button from the Grav admin dashboard.
More secure
Unfortunately website hackers are always looking at weaknesses in the software that your content management system uses to enable it to run. The software, often MySQL, that runs database driven websites can provide a gateway for a hacker to attack your website. The Grav content management system removes the need for MySQL and therefore removes that option for hackers. As a professional developer we’re always looking for new solutions that mean greater security for your website.
Easy to use
Not only is Grav fast and more secure than its database driven cousins, it also comes with a great admin system for helping you to manage your content. It’s particularly good for web pages which have complex content for example landing pages that have text, images, testimonials, slideshows and more.
Again, using our Cornwall based example, you may have a landing page that showcases features of your service - it could include some of the components mentioned above. With Grav it’s a simple task to edit these components, no short-codes, and certainly no navigating to unrelated areas of your content management system. It’s all grouped within the editing environment for your page, making your life much easier. It’s also easier to setup for the developer and therefore more cost effective than other systems.
As a Grav developer naturally we’d recommend this system. However, we’d love to demonstrate the modern Grav content management system to you in comparison to others, contact us on the details below. We’re based in Falmouth, Cornwall but we’re happy to work with you wherever you may be situated.
By: Tim Bowerbank
Role: Web Developer