Content Management System

Introduction

A website is a way of expressing ourselves on the INTERNET. It is a way of keeping the world updated about you (or your organization). It is a way of spreading word of your organization. But what use is a website if it is not kept updated? If you know that a website is never updated, will you ever go back to the page, except when you need outdated information? For these reasons, having an updated website has turned out to be an essential necessity.

Traditional System

Traditionally we use a static website. This is what usually any organization / individual go for in the beginning. “It is cheap and more than enough. Even if there is an update I can edit the source”, this is the usual thought. But is updating a website with html that easy? What if you need more than one person to be able to update the website sitting at different locations? All of them would need to have access to the server; all would need to know html… is it feasible? This is where dynamic websites came to help. It is now widely accepted by individuals and organizations for its needs, because it satisfies the basic need for computers – automation.

But does a basic dynamic website always serve your purpose? No, when you need a new functionality you need to edit your code. Also a dynamic website done for an organization may not be suitable for another. This made things tough in situations where you need to suddenly change the appearance, add a new functionality, etc. This led to Content Management Systems (CMS).

Content Management System (CMS)

CMS are completely dynamic websites in which anything to everything can be modified as per your wish and that too without the least knowledge of web designing. They are usually designed in such a way that you can update its functionality using customized modules. This way the same system can be used by many individuals/organizations and still the visitor doesn’t feel that they run on the same system.

The main feature of any CMS is Content Management itself. It provides easy ways of managing contents of your website.

As you can see above, CMS gives you an easy way to manage the content of your website. But is it all that a CMS gives? No, it gives you even more flexibility. A basic content management system provides you with a lot of features like:

1. Content Management

2. Menu Management

3. Block/Panel Management

4. Template Management

But just by having these features a site never becomes popular. To be popular, people need to know of your website… your site should come up as one of the top ranked results of major search engines like Google™. Content Management Systems, by default, optimizes your website for search engine indexing.

A lot of Content Management Systems are now available in the market. Some of them are efficient in performance; some others have better management, while some others provide a much simpler and easy to use API[1] for designing custom modules. Not much Content Management Systems provide this feature.

In The Market

1. Drupal
2. Joomla
3. PHP Fusion
4. eazyPortal
5. LoveCMS

External Links

1. Read reviews of CMS Systems
   
2. Try out Open Source CMS online

More On Content Management Systems

1. What is a Content Management System by Deane Barker
2. Content Management System SEO Requirements Quick Reference Guide by Michael Cardova