What is a CMS?

Posted on: 07 May, 2009

CMS stands for Content Management System and it does exactly what it says on the tin, it’s a system for managing your content! What this means in practice is that with a CMS you don’t have to be a web designer or programmer to update your website. In the bad old days if you wanted to publish some new information on the web, you would have to create a new web page, write the code for that page, and then upload it to your website. This process was quite slow and laborious. It also relied on the publisher of the information understanding things like HTML. With a CMS anybody can publish information on the web quickly and easily.

The first step is to set the CMS up. Many people do this themselves but depending on the circumstances sometimes a professional may be involved in tailoring the CMS to the specific needs of their client. Once the CMS is in place, the user will be provided with one or several user names and passwords that will enable them to log in to the CMS. They can then write new content and publish it to the web as quickly and easily as if they were using a word processor.

CMS’s come in all shapes and sizes, from the very simple to the incredibly complex. There are far too many to mention them all here, you can find a list of CMS’s and their respective merits on the CMS Matrix website. Lots of people argue evangelically for their favourite CMS (usually the only one that they have learned to use in any great depth.) The truth is that there is no one size fits all solution or product. Sometimes an “off the shelf” CMS is the most sensible solution. Other times a bespoke solution might be the correct choice. It really is a matter of deploying the most suitable tool for the task at hand.

For more detailed information check this page on Wikipedia.