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What is a Content Management System (CMS)?

April 29th, 2010

A content management systems, or CMS, is a great way to manage the content of your website, especially if you have a larger website and different people who are responsible for different parts of the website.

If you have a large website with many "static" website pages and you're tired of waiting for your IT staff or webmaster to make changes to the website, a content management system will put you in the driver's seat and make it easy for you

Advantages:

- Administration system for updating content without the need for HTML
- Easy to change look and feel using a few templates
- Database is used to manage text content
- Non-technical staff can create, edit, approve and approve website pages
- Control over approval of changes
- Ability to deliver different content to public and registered users

Three CMS examples

There are many different content management systems available, some of which are free, open-source applications such as Joomla! and many commercial systems such as Interspire's Website Publisher. Depending on your website requirements, Design-First will recommend the best CMS solution.

Joomla!

Joomla has emerged in the last few years as one the most popular open-source CMS applications. Joomla! uses PHP and mySQL and is extremely versatile. It is more than simply popular-it just works well and a volunteer community keeps making it better and better.

Because it is open source, there are thousands of "extensions" or small mini-components created by individual programmers and commercial software companies, which work within the Joomla! framework to give your website many different capabilities-from social networking to ecommerce and more.

Joomal features include:

- Search by keyword and advanced search capability
- Registration system for users with different menus for different groups
- Users can be assigned editing and publishing privileges
- Entirely web-based administration system
- Uses PHP and mySQL
- Open source code
- Over 3,000 extensions to provide many exciting website features

Interspire Website Publisher

While Website Publisher may not be considered as versatile as Joomla! in terms of available extensions, it is a robust, mature, well-supported CMS product with many great built-in features.

Website Publisher Features:

- Search by keyword and advanced search capability
- Users can be assigned editing and publishing privileges
- Entirely web-based administration system
- Uses PHP and mySQL
- Search engine optimized
- Article, news and blog sytem
- Many built-in templates

WordPress

WordPress is a content management system focused around blogging. Like Joomla!, it is open-source and it supports a "plugin" framework, allowing websites using WordPress to have different capabilities, based on different website requirements.

WordPress Features:

- Search by keyword and advanced search capability
- Easy to use web-based administration system
- Uses PHP and mySQL
- Search engine optimized
- Hundreds of available plugins
- Open source code
- Thousands of templates

What Content Management System is right for your website?

This depends on your business needs or website goals for the most part and how quickly you need your website up and running.

If you are building an informational website that you plan to expand into a portal or community website, Joomla! will be a better choice. Joomla! would be overkill for a simple blog website.

For many businesses, Interspire's Website Publisher is a great choice for managing hundreds or even thousands of pages, and has blogging capability built in.

Vann Baker
Vann Baker, President of Design-First, has been creating websites since 1995, from small business websites to large ecommerce, social network and informational websites using content management systems. He has successfully managed hundreds of website projects. For more information on creating a website and more, go to
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About the Author:
Vann Baker, President of Design-First, has been creating websites since 1995, from small business websites to large ecommerce, social network and informational websites using content management systems. He has successfully managed hundreds of website projects. For more information on creating a website and more, go to Design-First.com.

Author: Vann Baker

 

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Being a webmaster is a much more important job than most companies would dare admit. Webmasters are responsible for the company web presence on every level, from the website copy to the web and email server administration. Additionally, webmasters are often tasked even more duties that should be considered unrelated responsibilities for the position of webmaster. These extra duties often will include online as well as offline promotion and marketing, search optimization, advertising, application programming, graphic design and/or brand management. The role of the webmaster has grown over the years and webmasters need to grow with the company's expectations or the website will not succeed. For instance, it is easy to get banned from the search engines for not knowing the correct methods to use to optimize a website for a better results ranking from the search engines for any particular search phrase.

This is why Webmastery is here, not just to offer direction and assist webmasters, but to do so masterfully, as you expect of yourself, or as your company expects out of you.
 

Since I am an American and know only American English and SEO methods, I specialize in American Webmastery. Hence the domain name, Webmastery.US.
 

However, please note that often both sides of the coin are presented here. Some webmasters swear by Linux and we offer articles by such authors to give insight to their creativity. Others are die-hard Microsoft software fans and use Windows based servers. Despite the bias, each system has its own advantages, and such articles are reprinted here for their positive contribution to those platforms, not to enforce their bias. It is we that have to make the final analysis.
 

This difference is even more apparent when I am showcasing and promoting white hat SEO (search engine optimization) and a black hat SEO article is published here, which method if followed could get a website banned from the search engines. The reason I allow it a small platform is to showcase its apparent and obvious idiocy in contrast to white hat SEO techniques. And as I cannot edit these articles in order to correct them, I let their illogicality and stupidity stand on their own for a time without any edits. But in case their spaminess is not apparent, I often do not let such articles stand long.
 

 


 

 

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