Choosing the right CMS can make managing an education website easier. Explore what to consider, from content and workflows to integrations and scalability.
A school or education website can contain a significant amount of content.
News and events, programs, courses, staff profiles, policies, enrolment information, campuses, resources and general school information all need to be kept accurate and up to date — often by multiple people across an organisation.
The content management system (CMS) sitting behind the website plays an important role in making that possible.
Choosing the right CMS isn’t simply a technical decision. It affects how easily staff can manage content, how consistently information is presented, what the website can integrate with and how readily the platform can evolve as the organisation’s needs change.
For schools, early learning providers, tertiary institutions and other education organisations planning a new website, there are several things worth considering before choosing the technology behind it.
A content management system is the platform used to create, organise and manage website content without requiring someone to edit the underlying code every time something changes.
For an education website, this might mean allowing authorised staff to:
There are many different CMS platforms available, but they don’t all approach content management in the same way.
Some are primarily page-based, giving editors control over individual website pages. Others take a more structured approach, where information such as an event, staff member or course is managed as content that can be displayed wherever it is required.
Understanding how your organisation actually creates and maintains information is therefore a useful starting point when choosing a CMS.
One of the first questions to ask is who will actually use the CMS after the website launches.
In a smaller school, website updates might primarily be managed by one administration or marketing staff member. A larger school or tertiary organisation may have communications staff, faculty representatives, administrators and other contributors all responsible for different types of content.
Those scenarios require different levels of control.
A CMS may need to accommodate different user roles and permissions so that staff can access the content relevant to them without having unrestricted control over the entire website.
The editing experience matters too.
If routine updates are unnecessarily complicated, content can quickly become outdated or staff may become reliant on a developer for changes that should be manageable internally.
The goal should be to provide enough flexibility for staff to work efficiently while maintaining appropriate controls over the website’s design and content structure.
Traditional websites are often thought about as collections of pages.
That can work well for relatively simple websites, but education organisations frequently manage information that appears in multiple places.
Consider an upcoming open day: Information about that event might appear on an events page, the homepage, a campus page and within an enrolment section. If each instance needs to be maintained separately, inconsistencies can easily appear.
A structured CMS can instead treat the event as a single piece of content.
Staff update the information once and the website determines where and how it should appear.
The same principle can apply to:
Thinking about the website as a collection of interconnected content rather than independent pages can make larger education websites considerably easier to manage.
Not every organisation should have the same publishing process.
A small education provider may be comfortable allowing an administrator to make changes and publish them immediately.
A larger organisation might require content to be drafted by one staff member, reviewed by another and approved before it becomes publicly visible.
When choosing a CMS for a school or education website, consider how content moves through your organisation.
Who creates it? Who reviews it? Who should be able to publish it?
Depending on the organisation, useful CMS capabilities might include different user permissions, draft content, previews, scheduled publishing or more formal approval workflows.
The technology should support the organisation’s processes rather than forcing staff to develop workarounds around the limitations of the CMS.
Giving content editors complete freedom over every aspect of a page can initially sound appealing.
Over time, however, that flexibility can result in inconsistent layouts, typography, spacing, buttons and content structures as different people update the website.
A well-designed CMS should separate the things editors need to control from the things the website’s design system should control.
Staff should be able to update content confidently without needing to make design decisions every time they publish something.
For example, an editor creating a staff profile might only need to provide a name, role, biography and photograph. The website can then determine how that information is presented consistently wherever the profile appears.
This structured approach can help protect the visual identity and user experience of the website long after the original design project has been completed.
Education websites rarely exist in isolation.
Depending on the organisation, the website may interact with:
Not every system needs to be deeply integrated with the website. Sometimes a simple connection or link is the most appropriate solution.
But understanding these requirements early is important.
If information needs to flow between systems, the CMS and wider website architecture need to support that. Choosing the platform first and discovering important integration requirements later can unnecessarily constrain the project.
Website accessibility isn’t solely the responsibility of the initial designer or developer.
The content being published after launch also affects how accessible the website remains.
A CMS can help editors follow good practices by providing structured fields, sensible heading options and appropriate ways to manage images, links and other content.
It can also reduce opportunities for editors to unintentionally create inaccessible or inconsistent layouts.
Technology alone cannot guarantee an accessible website — content governance and staff practices remain important — but the CMS can make good publishing practices considerably easier to follow.
A website may be designed for today’s requirements, but the CMS will often remain in place for years.
The organisation might introduce new programs, open another campus, restructure its content, add new digital services or require integrations that weren’t part of the original project.
That doesn’t mean choosing the most complicated platform available just in case.
It means considering whether the underlying content model and technology can reasonably adapt as requirements change.
For organisations with relatively straightforward website requirements, a traditional CMS may provide everything needed.
For organisations managing large amounts of structured content, multiple websites or more sophisticated digital experiences, a different architecture may provide greater long-term flexibility.
One of the decisions an education organisation may encounter is whether to use a traditional or headless CMS.
With a traditional CMS, such as WordPress, content management and the website itself are generally more closely connected within the same platform.
This can be a practical approach for many websites. The platform provides an established editing environment, and the website is developed within the framework that the CMS provides.
A headless CMS, such as Sanity or Payload, separates content management from the front-end website.
Instead of the CMS determining how the website itself must be built, it manages and delivers structured content that can be used by a separately developed front end.
This can provide greater flexibility over the website’s design, performance and technical architecture.
More importantly for some education organisations, the content isn’t necessarily tied to a single website.
The same structured information could potentially be delivered to different websites, applications, portals or other digital experiences without needing to maintain separate copies of the content.
For a relatively straightforward school website with limited content and a small number of editors, a traditional CMS such as WordPress may provide everything the organisation needs.
For a larger education organisation with complex content relationships, multiple audiences, integrations or ambitions beyond a conventional website, a headless CMS such as Sanity may provide greater flexibility.
When reviewing your organisation, we can suggest the CMS that best suits your unique requirements.
Sanity is a headless CMS built around structured content.
Rather than forcing every organisation into the same predefined editing interface, Sanity allows the content environment to be configured around the types of information the organisation actually manages.
For an education website, that could mean creating dedicated structures for things such as:
Relationships can then be created between those different content types.
For example, a course could be associated with a particular campus, relevant staff members and related resources without that information needing to be recreated manually across different pages.
Sanity’s editing environment can also be configured around the people responsible for maintaining the content, providing a more purposeful experience than simply presenting staff with an unrestricted page builder.
Combined with a modern front-end framework, this gives developers considerable freedom over the website experience while keeping content management accessible to the people responsible for maintaining it.
For the right education organisation, that separation between content, design and technology can provide a strong foundation for a website that needs to evolve over time.
There isn’t one CMS that every school or education organisation should use.
The appropriate platform depends on factors including:
A smaller school with relatively straightforward requirements may be well served by a traditional CMS.
A larger school, multi-campus organisation, university or education provider managing substantial structured content may benefit from a headless approach such as Sanity.
The important thing is to make the CMS decision based on what the organisation actually needs rather than selecting a platform first and adapting the website around it.
The CMS is only one part of a successful education website, but it influences how the website operates long after the initial project has finished.
Taking the time to understand content, users, publishing processes and technical requirements before choosing a platform can result in a website that’s easier to manage today and better equipped to evolve tomorrow.
At Spacey Studios, we design and develop websites for schools and education organisations, with the technology selected around the requirements of each project rather than a one-size-fits-all platform.
For organisations that need a more flexible approach to structured content, we can also design and develop headless websites powered by Sanity CMS, creating a tailored content management experience alongside a bespoke front-end website.
If you’re planning a new education website and aren’t sure which CMS or technology approach is right for your organisation, get in touch with Spacey Studios to discuss your requirements.
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