[tbworld]

I wrote this for the average reader. @RichieBoy67, I know you are in the business and most of this is obvious to you. Just skip the parts that do not apply. Note: we all know SEO covers many things, I am using the term loosly.

This is the definition I like for a CMS: A CMS should make it easy for a website to manage and distribute content.

All "content management systems" have different features, from enterprise management to context indexing. vBulletin's has a bit of everything plus widgets. Most CMS's have turned into webpage-generators which is why they are so inefficient.

@RichieBoy67, if you have found efficiency in posting your articles in your forums, then there is no need to change from that.

In my situation I had to handle article submission from throughout a company. A CMS makes more sense in this situation, especially when the articles have a shelf life of a week. Creating static pages would be a bit time consuming.

The thing I see out there is pages filled with nonsense content. Widgets on everything including the weather. Unless someone is running a travel site or something where weather impacts their users -- why is it there? Everyone who runs a computer can go find the weather. That is not content it is filler and fluff.

So if you have found a unique way to present your information. I say keep it. Pages with high content that are easy to read with good AD placement rank much higher then web pages filled with ADs. Who wants to read an article on a page filled with fluff. I try to make it easy for the web-search-engines to separate the content from the fluff, since we all know that is their current focus.

If you are having trouble with managing your articles quickly, then a CMS will help. None of it replaces a web-programmer, just use Drupal for a while. Drupal is at least a true CMS, WordPress is more like a webpage generator. vBulletin CMS has a bit of both but mainly being tightly coupled through the database is it's main feature, beyond submission and content sorting.

I for one, can see no point in having a forum page and then posting half of my forum data on a CMS content page. It is confusing to the user. It may look nice, but what are we trying to accomplish?

I would say if you have flow in your web design, then in general you are 'ahead of the game'. If you are questioning the interaction of your layout then I think you are on the right track. If you have any specific questions, feel free to ask. I can at least offer you a free opinion.

--------------- Added 17 Jun 2014 at 01:12 ---------------

Originally Posted by RichieBoy67

I have also not seen any evidence that promoting threads to articles causes any kind of an impact on SEO, but then again this is something very hard to know because an impact would happen slowly and not at once.

If you do not need to promote a thread then you never have to worry if there are SEO pitfalls. We do not overlap, because as you pointed out - it can get confusing, maybe to SEO, but definitely to the user.

Do you have multiple users submitting articles? What is the frequency of article submission?

--------------- Added 17 Jun 2014 at 01:30 ---------------

I wanted to add, that I deal with business, so my opinions are really only applicable to that segment. People portals are different animals and use different strategies. My daughters boards, for instance, certainly do not fit the criteria I gave above, although the "love-life" widget I wrote for them definitely helps their SEO.