Content Management Systems – an introduction.

Content Management Systems - an introduction.

Content Management System A content management system is a computer application that allows publishing, editing and modifying content, organizing, deleting as well as maintenance from a central interface. CMSs have been available since the late 1990s. CMSs are often used to run websites containing blogs, news, and shopping. Typically aim to avoid the need for hand coding.

Main features of a CMS CMS features vary widely. Most CMS’s include the following. Web-based publishing, Format management, Revision control (version control), Indexing, search, and retrieval. Some content management systems also support the separation of content and presentation.

Content and Presentation The content management system (CMS) has two elements: Content management application (CMA) is the front-end user interface that allows a user, even with limited expertise, to add, modify and remove content from a Web site without the intervention of a Webmaster. Content delivery application (CDA) compiles that information and updates the Web site.

Web CMS A software system that provides website authoring, collaboration, and administration tools. Designed to allow users with little knowledge of web programming to create and manage website content with relative ease. Uses a content repository or a database to store page content, metadata, and other information assets. Has a presentation layer (template engine) to display the content to website visitors based on a set of templates. Uses server side caching to improve performance.

Capabilities of a CMS Automated templates Access control Scalable expansion Easily editable content Scalable feature sets Web standards upgrades Collaboration

Capabilities of a CMS Delegation Document management Workflow management Content virtualization Content syndication Multilingual Versioning

Advantages Low cost Easy customization Easy to use Workflow management Good For Search Engine Optimization

Disadvantages Cost of implementations Cost of maintenance Latency issues Tool mixing Security

Some Popular CMS WordPress was the most popular content management system before 2014. Textpattern is one of the first open source CMS. Joomla! is a popular content management system. Drupal is the third most used CMS and originated before WordPress and Joomla. ExpressionEngine is in the top 5 most used CMSs. It is a commercial CMS MediaWiki powers Wikipedia and related projects. Magnolia CMS. Cascade Server is popular among universities and enterprise scale organizations. eXo Platform Open Source Social CMS. Liferay Open Source Portal WCMS.