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Overview of Website Content Management Systems (CMS)

Website Content Management Systems (CMS) allow non webmasters to easily manage and edit website content.

They do this by separating the actual content from the content layout/structure.

In general non technical page editors/authors are responsible for creating and editing the content and more technical users (admins) manage the appearance and page layouts.

Because content and layout is separate  it becomes very easy to make changes to the appearance  of each web page like colour scheme, navigation etc without having to physically edit each page.

Almost all content management systems (Open source and commercial) use server side scripting and a database for the content and settings. Open source ones mostly use php and MYSQL and commercial tend to use asp and SQL (Microsoft).

What Does A Content Management System do?

The main features provided by content management systems are:

Content Management systems come in two forms:

Hosted

The content management system is owned and maintained by someone else and you access your content and templates and other management features through web pages provided by the system provider.

Again you may be using one already without realising it. Site building packages like Sitebuild-it use a Content management system, they are also used in blogging systems like Wordpress (.com).

Self Hosted

Content management systems usually use PHP or ASP pages and a database (MYSQL) e.g. WordPress.

With a self hosted option you are required to install the scripts,  database and configure the system, which is usually made easy by the host providing script based installs.

Because you have complete management control this is by far the most powerful option. See WordPress below.

Which One?

Although content management systems have typically been used by large websites with experienced webmasters they are becoming more popular with smaller sites due to the flexibility and the wide range of attractive templates.

Joomla and  WordPress are the most common CMS systems used by small business website owners

Joomla is a free open source content management system which has been used by small site owners like real estate agents, small businesses that have had their sites built by professional designers . It requires more technical expertise than WordPress, and although it is probably more powerful the extra functionality isn't normally required.

WordPress-Although used primarily as a blogging platform it is being used more often as a standard website platform. It is much simpler to set up and administer than systems like Joomla, and is really the main choice for almost all small business websites.  See Building Websites with WordPress.

 

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