What is a Content Management System (CMS)?
22 years ago, when I started in the web design business, I spent a lot of time building static websites. Most of my time was spent in Photoshop at the design stage of web development, where I would export my design as slices in a table layout. From there, I would designate a few spots for HTML copy, then add in my Flash and JavaScript elements. For these websites, I would usually do any number of requested updates to the site on a certain day of the week and invoice my clients monthly for these changes.
I would also get projects which required having an image gallery, press feed, bulletin board, or an e-commerce component. For these, I would build a dynamic, database-driven content management component that would allow the client to manage this content. For these projects, I would integrate my static HTML code with dynamic PHP and MySQL components. On other occasions, I would get projects which were company intranets/extranets, where all the content was database-driven.
What is a Content Management System (CMS) for Modern Websites?
Let’s define a content management system. As per Wikipedia, a CMS is described as:
“A content management system (CMS) is a computer program that allows publishing, editing, and modifying content as well as maintenance from a central interface. Such systems of content management provide procedures to manage workflow in a collaborative environment.[4] These procedures can be manual steps or an automated cascade. CMSs have been available since the late 1990s.”
CMS websites are typically used for content control, user management and tracking, searching and editing data, creating reports, eCommerce, blogging, and publishing a news feed among other functions. There are thousands of CMS systems out there for a variety of website sizes and requirements, and on top of those, developers would need to develop plug-ins or an entire custom CMS system.
For websites that were a fusion of database-driven content and static HTML code, the Content Management System (CMS) component was always an additional item, one specifically requested based on an estimation of how often the content would need to change.
What has changed in the last few years is the emergence of open-source projects, such as WordPress, Magento, Drupal, and Joomla. These platforms are free and developed by countless web developers worldwide. Due to the combination of cost (free) and the collaborative work of developers focused on ease of use and updates, CMS systems have become the standard, expected by website owners.
This arrangement benefits both the developer and the owner. In the past, content updates—which were critical for website owners to promote or showcase new goods or services—were sometimes inconvenient for web designers who were in the midst of other projects. A CMS such as WordPress makes sense for small to medium-sized websites because:
- It allows the customer to manage all text, image, press, and product updates themselves.
- Website owners now expect and rely on this level of content control.
The critical benefits that Content Management Systems (CMS) offer are greater content control and superior flexibility. Not only do they allow you to update content on your website more efficiently, but they also free you from being tied to a specific developer. With an open-source CMS, you can hire almost any developer to add functionality to your website.