Websites - An Overview of CMS Systems

Before even getting to an overview of Content Management Systems (CMS), we need to understand just what it is we are talking about. So, What is a CMS?

A content management system (CMS) is a collection of procedures used to manage work flow in a collaborative environment. These procedures can be manual or computer-based.

A web content management system (WCMS) is a CMS designed to simplify the publication of web content to web sites and mobile devices, in particular, allowing content creators to submit content without requiring technical knowledge of HTML or the uploading of files.

Several web based content management systems exist both in the Open Source and commercial domains. However, this is one area where Open Source Software software like Joomla, Drupal, and Wordpress have gained dominance over their proprietary counterparts.

The software provides authoring (and other) tools designed to allow users with little knowledge of programming or markup languages to create and manage content with relative ease.

Most systems use a database to store content, to facilitate the reuse of content, and enable flexible presentation options

A presentation layer displays the content to Web-site visitors based on a set of templates.

Most systems use server side caching boosting performance. This works best when the WCMS is not changed often but visits happen on a regular basis.

Administration is typically done through browser-based interfaces.

A WCMS allows non-technical users to make changes to a website with little training. A WCMS typically requires an experienced coder to set up and add features, but is primarily a Web-site maintenance tool for non-technical administrators.