What is a CMS (Content Management System)?

  • Print
Details
Category: What is ...?
Published on Friday, 27 May 2011 06:41
Written by Le Digitale
Hits: 482

A Content Management System is literally, just that – a system that allows you to submit, manage, and publish content (e.g., text articles / blog content and videos) to a website without having to write the code for a web page from scratch.  The real power of a Content Management System (aka “CMS”) is in its self-publishing potential -- that is, it enables people who aren't technical to publish new content and setup some pretty amazing websites very quickly, and without a full-time staff of computer programmers required to provide support.

There are a seemingly limitless number of Content Management Systems available, but 3 of the more popular free open source CMS platforms available are Joomla, Drupal, and WordPress.  In addition to publishing functionality, all three also have “extensions” available which allow you to literally “extend” the functionality of the application -- extensions that allow you to add features to your CMS such as user bulletin boards, games, calculators, chat rooms, and pretty much anything else you could ever want on your website are readily available, simple to install, and many times free!  General feedback is that WordPress is the simplest CMS platform to work with, but also has the most limited functionality and flexibility -- Drupal is the most robust CMS platform, but also has the steepest learning curve.  Joomla is my personal preference -- it seems to hit a nice middle zone between being easy to learn and feature rich; in addition to a short learning curve, Joomla easily customizable, and has numerous free extensions available.

Written by Le Digitale