Content Management Systems

Content management systems (sometimes referred to in the abbreviated term ‘CMS’) are systems that allow you to manage the content, and dependent on what options you have chosen for your CMS system, additional features which affect your website. If you plan to update both the content and design of your website on a regular basis, then your website is a more likely candidate for use on the basis of a CMS system; this is because most CMS systems provide you with a web based administration interface to help you manage the content and features which are relevant to your website on the fly from any internet connected computer or location. CMS systems are generally feature rich since there is normally a large community of web developers who actually develop these systems, which means that they are highly reliable in most cases; most high profile CMS systems are open source, which means that they are free for use by the general public and also means that the developer community which is behind the actual piece of software is normally one which isn’t paid, and the developers of that community generally give up their own time to aid in the development of the project. Most large scale websites are based on CMS systems, since the expanse of them is so large and new information is always being added to them - if they were to use regular static HTML pages then it would be more or less impossible for them to maintain the websites concerned to the extent that they do with the CMS systems that they use; you will also find that larger websites use their own custom built or premium CMS systems since they are after a system which is both secure and scalable so that it is able to keep up with the demand that their website will continue to get over time, and will also most likely increase. You will find that most smaller websites that are using CMS systems are using open source ones; this is because they are free, and the developer community behind them normally provides a good level of support for free through public forums - this also means that members of the general public are able to aid in the support of people who have problems with a certain piece or section of the CMS system, you will also find that open source CMS systems have a large add-on respitory which means that you can customize your open source CMS installation to the way you want it to be - this also means that you can carry out many activities from within one application which without would mean that you would have to install many separate systems to help meet the same level of functionality that the one CMS system is able to provide you with in terms of what you can do with it and scalability. CMS systems are generally written in the PHP server side scripting language, and are supported by a MySQL database back-end to ensure that all the data connected to them can be stored within one central and easily accessible location to ensure the greatest flexibility with your website.

Features

Many CMS systems provide you with a web based administration panel with a built in WYSIWYG (What You See is What You Get) editor to ensure that you can view and edit the content which you have added to the system effectively; the editor also means that you can add multimedia articles such as images and flash videos into your CMS pages and view them in real time without the need to have to save the content and actually reload the web page concerned to actually make sure that the content you have added will display correctly within the page that you have created - one thing to note if you are new to the concept of CMS systems is that all the information that you are adding to the system is stored in a central MySQL database which in some cases might be automatically generated when you install the system within your website hosting space. Most systems also allow for the functionality of add-ons which have been designed by third persons, although this will be discussed further on in the article; but in basic this means that you can extend the functionality of your CMS system install to ensure that it runs the way that you want it to run and that it contains the custom features that you want it to have. You will also find that the CMS system which you have chosen to use will allow for you to modify the links that are shown within the menus that are located within the system; this means that if you want to link to external websites or web pages that are not contained within your CMS system or under your domain then you can with ease, and can even place the links where you want if you style your system and manage it correctly. Most CMS systems provide some sort of login functionality which gives you the ability to create password protected areas for your website, which are only accessible if you have a username and password which are authorized for entry to the part of the website concerned; this also means that you can create multiple account to allow many people to add an edit the content of your website and CMS system, although this may prove to be a disadvantage if they end up changing something which they were not meant to have changed - one thing to note is that although not all CMS systems may provide a visitor login functionality for your website, all should provide a password protected administration interface which you can create many accounts for so that other people as well as yourself can manage the content of the CMS systen as well as the settings which it possesses. You will also be given the ability to theme or skin the CMS system that you choose, so that you can style it to look the way that you want it to - this feature is general of most CMS systems that are available, both open source and commercial; this means that even if you do choose to use a third party CMS system to base your website on, you can still skin it and theme it to ensure that it matches both the colour scheme of your company and is laid out the way you want it to be - this sort of functionality is normally achieve by the use of CSS, so knowledge of the CSS style language is a must have to theme or skin a CMS system.

Add-Ons

Most CMS systems allow you to create and add add-ons to them to help you expand the functionality of them, which means that you can get a lot more out of one system than you could with having multiple open source or commercial applications installed to carry out the different tasks which you may expect from both your website and the internet, and in some cases the web hosting that you have chosen to ensure that either you or your business has an online presence to sell products and services that you may want to provide over the internet. Add-ons for most CMS systems cover a wide range of categories, which means that you can use your CMS install to base almost any type of website on - the options are more or less endless when it comes to choosing add-ons for your installation; for example you might want to install a shop within your CMS installation - this should be easy since all you have to do in most cases is upload a few files and run a setup page that will then integrate the add-on into your CMS system in terms of databases and other functions which might be needed in order to allow the add-on to run efficiently. Add-ons don’t always have to be functions to help with the interactivity that users are able to have with either your website or your CMS install; some add-ons can help you on the administration side, for example in the case of Joomla, there are add-ons which are able to replace the advert management system within the administration panel - this is because it contains lot more features than the advert system that comes built in with Joomla, you might also find other add-ons which are able to replace certain features of the administration panel of the CMS system which you have chosen to use, the main reason being that they possess a lot more features than their counterparts which come built into the CMS system which you have chosen. Other CMS add-ons might also help you monitor the visitor activity to your website; for example there might be an add-on for use with the CMS system that you have chosen which can monitor the pages within your websites that visitors look at, the feature might also choose to log more intimate details about visitors such as their location and the IP address which has been assigned to either their internet connection or the computer that they have chosen to use.

Conclusion

In conclusion, content management systems provide you with many features which you can use to aid in the management of the content which you have displayed on your website; you can use them to edit and manage the content that you have contained within your website on the fly via the use of the web based administration panel that is provided with most CMS systems. If you feel the need to expand your website, then you can use the add-ons feature of the CMS which you are using to expand the use of your system via the use of add-ons which you have either developed yourself or have either purchased or downloaded from the websites of third party developers. If you have a static HTML based website which contains many pages, then you should consider a CMS system since it means that you and others can easily manage the content for your website without the need for any desktop website editor such as Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft Frontpage - it also means that the people who are managing the content require little to no technical knowledge since most CMS systems can be classed as ‘idiot proof’. You might also find with the ability to expand the use of your website, that you can expand the use of the administration area that you are using to manage your website; this is because the administration area and the features that it contains which are part of most CMS systems are very basic, and you can normally get third party add-ons which can improve on the built in features, and can help make the management of the system easier for you. If your website is only a small one, then you should only consider an open source CMS system if you are looking to make your website more dynamic; if you want a more scalable system because your website receives many visitors, then you should consider a commercial CMS system since these are normally very scalable since they can handle many users and are normally more dynamic and the support for them is normally much more helpful.