Date: July 1st 2008
Author: Ali Kanchwala
What is a Content Management System?
A content management system or CMS is an online software that enables content to be managed on one or more websites. A content management system allows one or more authors to prepare and publish information online, without needing to prepare HTML code. These systems allow information and resources (images, scripts, etc.) to be stored in a database for re-use, automatic indexing and searching, as well as for workflow management.
In today’s business world CMS are critical to the success of almost every website and intranet, and yet it seems that there are many organisations that are not familiar with this technology.
How can a CMS Help?
You or your organization has a website and it has grown dramatically over time, and while it is very functional, it is far from perfect. A lot of the content has become out-dated or is now inaccurate. Finding new content is difficult and time consuming as well as complex. Or even worse, the site has grown and changed so much you have lost track of all the pages on the site. What was the previous content? You didn’t think it was important so you didn’t make a backup, and some of the old information is now critical to your business or personal needs, but at this point there is little that can be done.
If this sounds like an unfortunate circumstance, you are not alone. The fact is, this is a natural by-product of maintaining a site using HTML or manual tools such as Adobe Dreamweaver or Microsoft FrontPage.
Thankfully, content management systems are specifically designed to tackle such situations and help you update your site anytime and from anywhere without all the technical know-how.
CMS – Further Defined
A content management system (CMS) allows the creation, management, distribution, publishing and discovery of the websites content. It covers the overall lifecycle of the pages/content on your website; from providing simple tools to creating the content; publishing and even giving the ability to manage the structure, appearance and navigation of the website.
Benefits a CMS can offer
A CMS can offer a wide variety of benefits, including:
- efficient authoring process
- faster turnaround
- greater reliability
- ease of use, using a What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) editor
- support for decentralised authoring
- increased security
- reduced duplication of information
- greater capacity for growth
- reduced site maintenance costs
- ability to easily incorporate search engine optimization data
Step involved in a CMS
The basic functionality of a content management system (CMS) can be broken down into several parts:
- content creation
- content management
- publishing
- presentation
- search engine optimization
Content Creation
A content management system (CMS) main feature is its easy-to-use authoring environment, designed to work like a text editor such as Microsoft Word. This provides an easy and non-technical way of creating and designing new pages or updating content, without having to know any HTML or programming knowledge.
Most content management systems (CMS) provide a web-based authoring environment, which simplifies operation, and allows content updating to be done from anywhere.
The key to the success of the CMS is its authoring tool feature. By providing a simple but efficient mechanism for maintaining the site, authoring can be delegated out into the business itself. For example, your marketing manager maintains the press release and news section of the website, your product manager keeps the product content or product catalogue up-to-date, or your secretary can update or add content to the web pages.
Content management
Once a page has been created, the date is stored into a database. Most importantly, the CMS provides a range of workflow capabilities. You can have your CMS designed to allow a single user to manage the entire site or have the site divided into groups giving different individuals the ability to manage their own respective sections. When the content is submitted you can either have it published right away or if you require maintaining a strict control over the quality, accuracy and consistency of the site have the information checked and approved by a designated individual or team before it is published.
Publishing
Content management systems (CMS) possess powerful publishing engines which allow the layout and appearance of the site to be applied automatically during the publishing process. It may also allow the same content to be published to multiple sites. The CMS fully automates the publishing process.
The site appearance is set by designers and developers and these publishing capabilities ensure that the pages are consistent across the entire site, and enable a very high standard of appearance. As well this allows the authors to concentrate on writing the content, and not worry about the overall look of the website.
Presentation
Content management systems (CMS) can also provide a number of features to enhance the quality and effectiveness of the website itself. As an example, the CMS will build the site navigation (i.e footer links of the page) for you.
A CMS can also make it easy to support multiple browsers and since a CMS make your site dynamic and interactive, it enhances the site's impact.
Search Engine Optimization
Content management systems also give the ability to insert Meta tags (with SEO tools) into the site giving your page better chances for being found by search engines. Having a CMS that is well organized, structured and optimized for search engines allows search engine spiders/bots to index the sites more efficiently.
However even with SEO tools you need to have relevant Meta tags and content and some keyword analysis might be required for better search engine results.
Conclusion
AiWood Digital’s Content Management System AiWrite includes most if not all of the above features. It is a fully customizable software that allows any type of features to be included into the website.
If you require a photo gallery, a member section, reciprocal linking system or even a simple guestbook; they can all be incorporated in AiWrite.