CMS
A guide to content management systems.
What is a CMS?
A content management system (CMS) is a system used to easily manage the content of a Web site. It is used to manage the creation, modification, publication, and removal of content from a Web site without needing an expert webmaster to do it for you. A regular HTML webpage is static, which means that to change it the file must be edited and uploaded to your server. You need to know how to code to do this.
With a content management system, the content within the pages is pulled from your database when someone visits your page. The CMS has an "admin" section where the content of a page is pulled from the database and shown to you - allowing you to make changes to the content and save the new content. The formatting of the content is already formatted through a layout template. A CMS will come with a default layout template but you can also download free templates that users create.
A CMS allow you to add some complex funtionality to your site because a CMS come with ready-to-go modules that can be turned on and off on your site, like: forums, polls, articles, and more. It would be impossible for a beginning coder to code these features himself and it would even be somewhat hard to integrate unrelated ones into the CMS. But if you use a CMS and want to use one of these features then just log into the admin section and set it to on. Most CMS also allow you to control the color scheme through "themes". You can also change the theme easily in the admin area. So a CMS is basically a template for your web site which enables non-coders to publish a web site with a lot of functionality and many features without having to learn the technical aspects of a web site.
Advantages
 | No worrying about design and layout - The design and layout of a CMS is done for you. Many times an amateur will struggle for months getting a design and layout going. |
| No need to learn coding - All you have to worry about is writing content. |
| Content management - Most CMS's have an article management system that automates the process of publishing articles. It automatically updates the article list, quotes a set amount of words, and has a link to the individual article. |
| Integrated backend - When creating a website there are many features you will want the website to have. You'll may want a login system, forum, polls on different topics, or the ability for users to comment on articles. Having all these features integrated together can be a pain in the ass. This can happen when you want two different features which require a login - like a forum and article commenting. You certainly don't want to force your users to create 2 different logins but you may not have the skills to hack your other features so they use the login system of the forum. Although the biggest forum software - like phpBB and VBulletin - have many hacks that can integrate features, creating an integrated backend can be one of the most aggravating aspects of being a webmaster. Beginning webmasters, an even some intermediate wembasters, will not have the skills to do all this. A CMS automatically comes with an integrated backend due to all the pre-coded features which can be turned off and on. There is no aggravation, time, or money wasted. |
| Content is stored in a database - Central storage means that content can be reused in many places on the website and formatted different ways wihout re-writing everything. |
| Dynamic content - Modules like forums, polls, and commenting allow you to add dynamic content to your page. |
| Content scheduling - A CMS may allow you to time-control your content publishing - allowing you to set the time you want content to be shown or taken down. |
| Decentralized authoring - You can create many users so that different people can publish content. You can coordinate the content publication by assigning users different permissions to different pages. |
Disadvantages
| You may still need to learn how to code - If the CMS doesn't look exactly the way you want it to, then you'll want to change the HTML templates. |
| Most come with overused "skins" - This means your site will look like a lot of other sites out there - which makes it hard for you to establish a unqiue web brand. |
| Templates may be hard to edit - With a CMS there can be many layers of templates within templates and the construction of the code can be difficult for non-coders. |
| Content Management systems are resource hungry - Web sites that use a CMS have many more hits per page and make many more SQL queries than static pages. If you have a very cheap hosting package and you have a popular site then your site may have a lot of downtime. |
| Your web site will not be very flexible - The themes and skins make CMS-powered sites hard to change. |
| SEO - A CMS will usually publish pages with dynamic URLs (URLs that have query strings). A couple of years ago Google had trouble indexing dynamic URLs but it they are getting better at it now. This is still a major concern for webmasters. If your CMS produces URLs then this alone is reason enough not to use that CMS. |
| Some content management systems produce poor code - A poorly-coded CMS may cause your site to load slower. |
| Lack of support - If you get a popular CMS then they may offer upgrades in years to follow but if you get a less-popular or custom made one then there may be no upgrades or support available. If you want custom improvements on your CMS then it will be harder to find coders to help you since it is custom code. This can be a huge issue if your site stop functionaing correctly for some reason - you may be hostage to your code. |
| A CMS-powered site may be harder to move - Switching your site to another server may or may not be an issue for webmasters. A CMS-based site can be hard to move because the content is stored in a database, the CMS requires installation, and there are so many files needed. |
