Content Management Systems

In its simplest form, a CMS is a software package that provides tools for authoring, publishing, and managing content on a web site. “Content” includes anything from a news story, a blog post, a video, or a photograph, to a podcast, an article, or a description of a product that you are selling. In more general terms, content is any combination of text, graphics, photographs, audio, and video that represents something visitors to your site will read, watch, and hear.

A CMS typically provides a number of features that simplify the process of building, deploying, and managing web sites, including the following:

• An administrative interface

• A database repository for content

• A rich user interface to associate content that is stored in the database with a web page on the site

• A toolset for authoring, publishing, and managing content

• A component for creating and managing menus and navigational elements

• The tools required to define and apply themes

• User management

• A security framework

• Taxonomy and tagging to organize content by category

• Online forms

• E-commerce capabilities

There are hundreds of CMS's available (check out www.cmsmatrix.org). They range from simple blogging-centric platforms, such as WordPress, to complex enterprise-class content management solutions, such as Drupal.