CMS / Portals

A content management system (CMS) is a computer application used to create, edit, manage, and publish content in a consistently organized fashion. CMSs are frequently used for storing, controlling, versioning, and publishing industry-specific documentation such as news articles, operators’ manuals, technical manuals, sales guides, and marketing brochures. The content managed may include computer files, image media, audio files, video files, electronic documents, and Web content.

Content management software is what powers many of today’s biggest websites, providing the essential framework to create, modify, and administrate a website. It’s often the underlying framework for small business websites, giving webmasters the ability to create and edit pages, blog posts, plugins, and other essential elements of a website. However, these features differ depending on the CMS in use.

You can envision content management software as a complex system of website administrative features that don’t require an understanding of HTML or CSS to be used. They make it possible for the average business owner to manage their own website and avoid costly website maintenance services.

Every CMS is unique and provides its own advantages and disadvantages, which gives website owners the opportunity to choose the best system for their needs. Additionally, some content management software is opensource and can be customized. Many have their own community of developers that contribute to the software by creating free themes and plugins.

Content management systems encompass all website management software

Something that’s unique about content management systems is that it’s a broad category that encompasses a wide variety of website management tools, including the most popular of these tools, blog software. Thanks to WordPress and other CMS’ under the blog software umbrella, like Joomla, you’re probably already familiar with what these tools do. WordPress has become the most dominant of all content management software with over 50% of the total market share and Joomla being the next closest at just 6%.

However, because content management software is a globally applied category, that means e-commerce systems like Magento and Shopify, or forum systems like vBulletin and PHPBB, are all considered a CMS. Any software that allows content to be managed online is technically a content management system.

The features and usage of CMS software varies widely because of this. There’s no standard feature-set for content management software. Although all these systems are designed to allow for the creation, modification, and display of digital content, they don’t all work in the same way. As is the case with e-commerce and forum systems, some CMS’ are designed for other types of unique media such as video content or graphics. Many others are geared toward traditional text-based content such as blog articles.

What does content management software typically do?

Content management software does have features that are relatively common across all systems. This of course includes the already referenced features of adding and modifying web content but there are many other features that are common to find as well.

Multiple Users

Most CMS’ support collaboration by allowing user accounts to be registered with differing permission levels assigned. This allows for admin accounts, user accounts, and staff accounts.

Search Engine Optimization

Content management software should also provide search engine optimization features, such as SEO-friendly URLS. Additional SEO features are sometimes accessed through plugins or addons for some systems.

Modularity and extensibility

Extending your website with a breadth of new features is generally possible through extensions, often called plugins or addons. These are easily downloadable enhancements that serves as modular installs. Within a few minutes, free plugins can dramatically change a content management system and add new features to the software that are unique and catered to your specific needs.

Appearance and templates

Most content management software allows you to change the layout of the website, the color scheme, and other basic appearance settings. Many systems provide themes that can be easily installed to quickly change the entire front-end appearance of the site without having to touch HTML or CSS code. They often come with an extensive back-end editor where you can customize the theme’s settings.

Upgrade functionality

All content management software must be updated over time for security and improvements. As these upgrades are released, it’s important that the system provide a wizard to easily install the new changes. Keeping your content management software up-to-date is important to preventing security breaches, hacks, and other malicious attacks.

Auditing and logs

Knowing exactly what went wrong when there’s an error or break in your website is important to implementing a fix. Proper logs allow you to view error messages and crash reports during your audits. This is essential to a content management system as it allows webmasters to diagnose and fix issues with the website, without the problem escalating and becoming more troublesome to front-end or back-end users.

Compliance with standards

Standards such as WAI-ARAI and HTML5 and CCS3 compliance is important to browser compatibility and security. Content management software should provide this compliance out-of-the-box.

Why consider a CMS?

Content management software should be considered for its many advantages over raw HTML and CSS. This includes the reduced need to code a webpage from scratch, the ease in creating a unified website, control over versions and updates, and the ability to assign permission level and manage users. Content management systems have become the most popular way to build and maintain a website.