Custom website with a CMS you update yourself

Why a website with a management area

Some businesses change their content every week: a designer adds a project, a restaurant updates its menu, a shop changes its catalogue, a school posts its schedule. Asking a developer each time is slow and costs money. A website with a CMS solves this: you log into a private area, change what you need, and the public site updates.

Unlike a generic CMS such as WordPress, our management area is built for your site. You see the fields that make sense for your business, in plain language, and you cannot break the design by mistake.

What you can manage yourself

• Projects or portfolio: add, reorder or hide a project with its photos and text.
• Gallery: upload photos, which are compressed automatically so the site stays fast.
• Menu, services or prices: change an item, a price or a description.
• Catalogue: products, categories, availability.
• News and events: publish an announcement or a date.
• Team, hours, contact details: keep the practical information right.

We decide together, during the brief, what should be editable. The more precise the list, the simpler the admin area. Everything else, such as the layout, the colours and the structure of the pages, stays fixed, so the site keeps the quality of its design whatever you change in the content.

A real example in Montreal: CHMT Design

CHMT Design is the portfolio of designer Charles Chaumet in Montreal. Beyond the public site, it includes a private management area where he publishes his projects himself, without going through us and without touching any code. The CHMT Design case study shows how the public site and the admin area fit together.

The best admin area is the one you can use without a manual.

We built the same kind of management area for a dance school in Guadeloupe, Julan Franciane, with classes, shows and a gallery. Both are on our portfolio page (in French).

Who a website with a CMS is for

A management area is worth it when your content changes often and you want to keep control of it. It suits in particular:

• designers, photographers, architects and studios who add projects regularly;
• restaurants and cafés whose menu, specials or events change;
• schools, clubs and associations with schedules, classes and news;
• shops and distributors with a catalogue to keep up to date without selling online;
• real estate and rental businesses with listings that come and go.

If your site will barely change after launch, a management area adds little: a business website is simpler and cheaper.

How it works behind the scenes

The site is built with React and hosted on Firebase (Google Cloud). Your content is stored in a database, and access to the management area is protected by authentication: only the accounts you choose can log in. Private areas are excluded from Google, while the public pages remain pre-rendered so that their text is readable by search engines and AI tools.

For Quebec businesses, the management area can handle both languages, so that you update the French and English versions side by side. Bill 96 requires the French version of a commercial site aimed at Quebec to be at least as accessible as any other; keeping both in the same screen makes that easy to maintain. If your site collects personal information, it follows Law 25.

Price and timeline

A website with a CMS starts from our multi-page website, available starting at CA$4,300 for about five pages with basic SEO. The management area is then quoted according to what needs to be editable: a simple gallery is not the same work as a catalogue with categories and stock. The quote is free, Canadian clients can be invoiced in Canadian dollars, and payment can be split between a deposit and the balance.

1. 01
   Brief

   We list your pages and exactly what you want to update yourself.

2. 02
   Mock-up

   You approve the design of the public site and the main screens of the admin area.

3. 03
   Development

   We build both, then test the admin area with you on real content.

4. 04
   Launch

   We put the site online, create your accounts and show you how to use them.

If your needs go further, with customer accounts, dashboards or subscriptions, the project becomes a platform: see SaaS development. If you only need a site you rarely change, a business website is enough.