What is a CMS (Content Management System)?

What is a CMS? CMS stands for content management system. It is a web application that allows you to create, edit, and manage content on a web site. A CMS lets you set up a web site quickly and easily and even your mom could edit it (no offense to your mom). Most content management systems specifically have these features:

User management with permissions or roles
Version control to keep track of different versions of the content
Ability use different designs but keep it separate from the content
Ability to create HTML using a Rich Text editor
Content hierarchy or other organization that allows you to organize the web site pages

What is a CMS going to do for you? It’s going to save you loads of time. No longer will you have to slave away writing code that someone else has already written. Instead you will use existing code and focus on the content.

What is a CMS good for?

A content management system allows you to easily create new content
The content can be managed by anyone, even if they don’t have web development skills
A good CMS makes it easy to optimize your pages for search engines
New features like polls, user managements systems, and forums can be quickly installed and integrated into your website
Because most CMS are used by many people, more bugs are fixed and they can be very secure.

What is a CMS not good for?

Security. The other side of the coin is that attackers will be more likely to look for exploits in popular content management systems so if you don’t keep the software up-to-date you may become a target.
A CMS can be less flexible than raw HTML and require learning a new system which may be more time consuming if you already know a programming language well

So where do you get started if you want to use a content management system? Here are some of the most popular content management systems that also happen to be free:

Joomla

Joomla is one the most popular and easy to use content management systems on the internet today. It is a derivative of the Mambo content management system.

Drupal

Drupal is an incredibly powerful CMS that has become very popular. It includes advanced features such as SEO, multi-language capability, and a vast array of modules.

ModX

ModX is not as popular as most other content management systems but it probably should be. It provides powerful features like search engine optimization and the ability to edit content right from the front-end. It also includes some cool AJAX components.

If you want to give a particular CMS a test run to see how well it works or how it will meet your needs, check out Open Source CMS. You can learn more about “What is a CMS?” by reading articles on CMS Review. If you want to explore a list of other content management systems, try Wikipedia.

Posted on July 22, 2008

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