What is a CMS ?
It seems there is some confusion out there on who does what, when it comes to use and host various CMS .
A CMS (content management system) is a tool that allows you to create homepages, blogs, e-commerce-sites and webportals of various kinds. Most CMS are meant to make website creation easier and often you don’t even need to touch a line of code. Most of these website creators can be hosted anywhere you want (on your own server at home, a dedicated or shared hosting server, a root server).
The most popular CMS are WordPress, Joomla, Drupal, Magento and Prestashop, these are mostly free and open source. There are also other CMS like Wix, Jimdo, MyWebsite or Shopify, but these are proprietary and are only hosted by there creators. The later tools often propose a limited cost free version (like Wix), but you have to pay if you want more features. Unlike the free and open source website creators, they also have the drawback to be less flexible but are often easier to use.
What does your hosting provider do ?
Your hosting provider does nothing more than hosting your homepage, whether you have created it with a CMS or a with website-creator program you install on your computer.
Often your hosting provider offers you also a one click installation solution for most CMS for an easy start, but they don’t do more than that. In some cases there are also options like doing an automatic backup of your website and stuff like that.
So if your CMS doesn’t work as intended or doesn’t work at all, if you need assistance in setting it up, in using it or anything else related to your CMS, there is absolutely no clue in contacting your hosting provider to get help. Your hosting provider can’t and will not assist you with that, this also applies if you created your homepage by other means. The only exception to it is, when you use a website building tool that has been created by your hosting provider.
For most CMS you can get assistance from their respective creators, their forums and communities. Note that some only offer paid support (like Prestashop for example). Otherwise you may also contact a webmaster (not me!) or web developer. But professionals like these won’t work for free (except in North Korea) and aren’t cheap (if they are good at it).
