Recently we'd been asked about the expandability of our CMS, specifically regarding the installation of plug-ins directly by clients themselves.

While technically it is certainly possible for any of our clients to install plug-ins within their individual CMS installations, we actually do not recommend this.  In fact, we ask all of our clients to please be sure to contact us first before making any modifications to their CMS themselves.

There are several reasons for this, but before we elaborate we would like to give an example of an opposite situation...

If a client takes it upon themselves to build their own Web site, they can certainly download and install plug-ins they need to expand upon their original CMS installation in order to make it do whatever it is they want it to do.  If they run into compatibility issues or if something breaks, that client must spend the time figuring out what's wrong and how to correct it.

When a client comes to Studio4Squared to have their Web site built, that client is coming to us for not only our design expertise - but also for our extensive experience with building Web sites using a content management system.

Studio4Squared will do all of the "dirty work" to build the site from scratch.  We'll install the CMS, we'll build the site structure, install any of the necessary plug-ins required for the project, and then teach the client how to edit that content themselves.

After we build a site, if a client finds that they require additional capabilities - just let us know and we'll be happy to do the necessary research that may be required, but more importantly we'll do all of the actual work involved to install the plug-in.  We'll be sure there are no compatibility issues, we'll be sure that installing the plug-in or making the core modifications won't wipe out anything.

After all, you've got more important things to deal with than worrying about how the backend of your Web site works.  Why not just leave that part to the experts!