Web development. What is a CMS?

When the Internet was very young, when the huge spider of progress was just starting to spin its world wide web, they appeared. They were the first websites. Maintenance and constant updates of these sites required the knowledge of the hypertext markup language (HTML) and the skills of working with graphic images.

However websites that consisted of several pages with text and a couple of images became a thing of the past long ago. Today practically any website has at least several different sections and subsections, a lot of graphic elements, Flash animation, music and video files on its pages. How to manage all this variety of content? Content management requires considerable knowledge and time costs from a professional webmaster, not to mention site owners – people who frequently do not have the required store of knowledge and enough time to devote it to site maintenance.

It is evident that they need some kind of a tool that will be able to considerably simplify the task of website management. And there is such a tool! A content management system (CMS) is the most appropriate solution.

What is a CMS?

CMS (an acronym for content management system) is a kind of software that allows the users to create or edit website content (text, images, media content) without the involvement of website developers. It means that the user does not necessarily has to acquire programming skills or learn the hypertext markup language (HTML) to publish a piece of news or an article on his site or add an image. To be more precise, this software is called a web content management system (WCMS) and is one of two kinds of content management systems; the other is ECM (enterprise content management). But in the sphere of web development CMS has become the substitute synonym for WCMS.

Usually a CMS consists of two parts:

• back-office; it is the part of the system that is responsible for the functionality and information storage;
• front-office; it is the part of the system that provides the user interface.

Why do web developers use CMSs?

As it has already been mentioned above, the necessity to create CMSs was caused by the increasing complexity of web design and website content. Websites ceased to be static, and the efficiency of information updates on their pages became the guarantee of success for many commercial projects. Earlier to manage the site webmasters had to edit the codes of all interrelated pages manually; it was quite a tiresome process. Besides, the involvement of a webmaster from the outside made the commercial companies face the prospect of the security policy violation. As soon as the first CMSs appeared, website management ceased to be routine “code editing”. It allowed to concentrate on the meaning content of the published information instead of its presentation.

How do CMSs work?

The operation principle of all CMSs is based on the separation of website content from its presentation (website design). In most cases website design is changed very rarely, whereas changes of content may take place every day, and what is more – every hour. Therefore CMSs use the so-called templates – special “blank” page headings where website design has been already described. All you have to do is to fill them with information. The user can use a special WYSIWYG editor (WYSIWYG is an acronym for what you see is what your get). This editor is very similar to conventional text editors of office software applications therefore is will be quite easy for a user to cope with such editor. And thanks to the availability of a great number of ready-made templates in the system the choice of a suitable web design becomes a matter of minutes.

The information is stored in the database, for example in MySQL, and is requested from it during the load of site pages.

Work with a CMS does not require the installation of any additional software as the system itself is located on the server and is accessed with the help of a common Web browser. Content management systems support most of the popular Web browsers, such as Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome, Opera, Apple safari etc.

Kinds of CMSs

As any other software product a content management system may be free or paid, open source or proprietary. The advantages of paid content management systems consist in constant technical support provided by the CMS developer, constant updates of the product versions, and higher security level as compared to free products. At the same time free content management systems compensate the main disadvantage of paid CMSs – their cost.

The access to the source code in open source content management systems allows to change some functions, expand the features of CMSs. It is worth mentioning that open source CMSs are not necessarily free of charge: there exist both paid and free open source content management systems.

What are the advantages of CMSs?

It is convenient to consider the benefits granted by content management systems from different angles: from the point of view of a website developer and from the point of view of a site user.

From the point of view of a website developer. Thanks to the availability of ready-made modules CMSs give an opportunity to introduce changes of the site structure in an efficient and productive way by arranging these modules. The use of modules also ensures higher quality of development as its reduces the probability of occurrence of mistakes in the program code.

From the point of view of a site user. CMSs offer first of all convenient and easy-to-use interface for editing site content and does not require special knowledge in the sphere of web design, HTML coding etc. CMSs also allows not only to show site visitors the information, but also interact with them in the dialog mode: users can register, communicate on a forum or in a chat, leave their remarks and requests in the guestbook etc.

P.S. Professionals pursue one main object: to get a skilfully designed and, what is more important, an easy-to-use website. Using content management systems you can achieve this object very easily and save your time and money!

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content management system, content management, website development, web content management system, wcms, types of cms, mysql, wysiwyg editors, site management, website content