The Juice Behind Your Website The content management system--the powerful, behind-the-scenes operator--can make or break your site. Here's how to choose the right one.

Margaret Schell wanted a new website for S.PR, the boutique public relations firm she owns in Los Angeles. The firm already had an attractive, simple site that let visitors find her business address, phone number and client list. But Schell wanted something more dynamic, filled with current press clippings and photos, and more importantly, she wanted to blog. So she hired a web developer who created the website of her dreams.

Until she tried to use it.

"It was so impossible," Schell says of the content management system, or CMS, that was created especially for her business, "we just let it sit there."