What is Content Management?
A content management system (often called simply a CMS) is an application accessed via a private, password-protected 'backend' or 'back office' area of your website, from which all the content (text, images, navigation etc) of your 'public' or 'frontend' site is generated, edited and updated by authorised users.
Everything from a single blog to a large many-sectioned site such as a newspaper website depends upon and content management backend to generate and structure all public content.
A CMS requires a database in which all content entered or edited by its authorised users is stored - the public frontend website is then generated from the information saved in the database.
Permissions for various levels of authorised user are also set from within the CMS - e.g. Author, Editor, Site Administrator - and the actual design and 'architecture' of the site is also largely created from within the CMS backend.
Just like a public website, the CMS backend can be accessed from any computer with an internet connection anywhere in the world - provided you have the username and password to gain entry to the CMS backend area. This allows the travelling blogger or the foreign correspondent or any team member out in the field to update their public website instantly from their laptop, an internet cafe or even using their mobile phone.
The advantages of having part or all of your public web site controlled by a CMS backend are obvious - instant updating and additions, complete control over who contributes what to the public site, no need to pay web designers every time you want to add a page or an image or adjust an online event calendar, plus all the search engine and visitor benefits a site with constantly fresh additional content is likely to attract.
The dowsides of having a CMS? Well, the very significant additional layer of complexity involved in customising and tweaking a CMS application to make it fit with the client's needs adds considerably to the initial web design costs, as does the configuration of a robust database and, in some cases, the need for a fully-featured hosting web server. There is also a certain learning curve involved for non-technical users of a CMS. Not to mention the rather rigid, inflexible and often poorly coded web sites that 'out of the box' content management systems tend to produce - resulting in sites of almost identical appearence being encountered all over the web.
We hope subsequent articles will help you decide whether having a CMS-driven website is right for you or not.
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