12-06-2012, 04:28 PM
Content Management System (CMS)
A Content Management System (CMS) makes it easy for non-technical contributors to maintain and expand their website. A CMS uses software and a database to manage and organize website content. Once a visitor makes a request to the website, the CMS selects the correct content and displays it in a custom interface template.
Benefits of a Content Management System
Separation of design, structure, and content
The division of these three layers allows many advantages throughout the life cycle of the website. Each area of the site can be recreated and adjusted independent of the other areas. The design layer can be completely reworked for a new user interface without the need for any adjustments to structure or content. The structure can be adjusted for additional functionality with no changes required to design and content. Content can be changed with no need to adjust the front-end design or functional structure. The separation of these three areas creates the flexible strength of a content management system.
Content production without programming or design experience
A Content Management System allows the editor to interact with the site in several ways. The CMS provides a graphical user interface that allows the editor to create content, add images and multimedia files, create content schedules, and much more.
Other Common advantages of a CMS:
• Decentralized maintenance.
Based on a common web browser. Editing anywhere, anytime removes bottlenecks.
• Designed with non-technical content authors in mind.
People with average knowledge of word processing can create the content directly. No HTML knowledge needed.
• Configurable access restrictions.
Users are assigned roles and permissions that prevent them from editing content which they are not authorized to change.
• Consistency of design is preserved.
Because content is stored separate from design, the content from all authors is presented with the same, consistent design.
• Navigation is automatically generated and adjusted.
Menus are typically generated automatically based on the database content and links will not point to non-existing pages.
• Content is stored in a database.
Central storage means that content can be reused in many places on the website and formatted for any device (web browser, mobile phone/WAP, PDA, print).
• Dynamic content.
Extensions like forums, polls, shopping applications, searching, news management are typically modules.
• Cooperation.
Encourages faster updates, generates accountability for authored content (logs) and cooperation between authors.
• Content scheduling.
Content publication can often be time-controlled, hidden for later use or require user login with password.
What is a content management system, and why?
A static website is built in HTML code and can only be updated by a trained web developer. In contrast, a website that uses a content management system (or CMS) can be edited, expanded and updated by regular users and administrators. There are 2 main benefits of using a CMS for your site:
1. Content can be easily maintained, which will help you achieve a fresher, content-rich site that ultimately delivers better results.
2. Your website can be maintained by your existing staff, which reduces the ongoing maintenance costs.
Most good content management systems work by organising the text, images and files for your site within a database. Changes to your site can be made through a special database interface. Each page of your web site is then programmed to link to the CMS to retrieve the appropriate content for the page. Every time a page is visited it checks the database for its content, so any updates that are made to the CMS are immediately visible on your site. No special software is required for visitors to view a content managed web site because when the web server sends your web pages to the visitor they are sent as plain HTML, so it looks and works just like a static site.
What is a good Content Management System?
A good CMS should not require you to install any special software on your computer and you should not need to learn HTML or other coding languages. Your CMS should allow you to use HTML (if you want to), and to change fonts or layouts. Finally, but importantly, a good CMS will be fast, secure, simple and easy-to-use.
Content Management - The Get Started Way
Get Started is passionate about content management and for several years the provision of Content Management Systems (CMS) has been a cornerstone of our services. Our content management systems empower our clients to perform a range of tasks for which they previously needed to hire professional developers (like us). We believe that when a company can update the content (text, images, files or other data) of their own website then the site tends to:
• be more accurate and up-to-date
• have more content, structured more appropriately for visitors
• be more popular and successful
• be better value for money over its lifetime
However, the main reason that we are so committed to content management is that our clients love to be able to update their own content. Our commitment to making CMS affordable and successful for our clients has led us to develop content management systems that end up being cheaper than static sites.