Are You a Good Candidate for a CMS?

A CMS (Content Management System) is a software system that allows users to control HTML documents, images, multimedia resources and the like. With a CMS, you can facilitate the control, organization, editing, and publication of Web content.

A bit of history.

Originally used for Web publishing, early content management systems were developed for online magazines and corporate newsletters. In 1995, CNET created Vignette, an internal Web document management and publication system. This helped to spawn the market for commercial software systems, evolving over the years into various types of content management systems, Wikis (collective content management), and groupware (workgroup software for network usage, including email and scheduling software).

A typical CMS has features, such as:

1. WYSIWYG tools to allow non-tech-savvy users to create and edit Web content.

2. Content and layout templates which are applied to new and existing content to create, and disseminate content across a Web site.

3. Navigational elements that are automatically generated of based on content taxonomy defined within the CMS itself.

4. Workflow structures supporting the assignment of users and permissions to specific pages and / or areas of content.

5. Automatic conversion of data into formats suitable for publishing. Helps to unify documents into common formats for sharing.

6. Version control constructs allowing users to manage multiple versions of content.

7. Repository publishing enabling content indexing, for easy search and retrieval.

8. Easily installable plug-ins to extend your site's functionality, such as survey systems, ecommerce processors, etc.

In our next article, we'll talk about the bottom-line benefits of a CMS.