|
Written by Mike Wayne
|
|
Friday, 17 July 2009 00:07 |
What is a Content Management System?
A Web Content Management System (CMS) is a browser based system used to update your website or blog. By using a CMS, you can virtually know nothing about HTML coding or website design to update your website. Adding content to your site is as easy as typing a letter in Microsoft Word. You can add text, images and video quickly and easily giving virtually anyone the ability to run a professional website or blog.
Why Should I Use A Content Management System?
Why not? Practically every site or blog on the net is running on a CMS. It simply does not make sense to add new content to a website manually anymore (by manually I mean hand-coding page by page). Content Management Systems also are configured to provide better site organization. Basically they organize your articles and content for you, neatly and efficiently. They support "tags", provide built-in search engine optimization, and can even alert the search engines when you post new content. This makes it easier for people to find your site on Search Engines, like the almighty Google!
How Does A Content Management System Work?
Content Management System manage your site for you - they do all the heavy lifting behind the scenes so you can focus on your content, not the technology. They help you organize and manage your files, your articles, and your site's appearance. All you have to do is manipulate the content to achieve your desired result!
One of the most powerful features of a Content Management System is the separation of your websites content from it's appearance. Think of a website or a blog as a person. You can change clothes every day but you are still the same person, just styled differently day by day. How does this apply to a CMS? What this means is that you can change your websites appearance ANYTIME you want and your content will remain the same. You can change the lettering style (font), color scheme, ANYTHING YOU WANT and all the content you created is left intact.Â
You can even completely reorganize your content at the drop of a dime. Wrote a review about your cellphone and want to move it from your "technology" section to your new "reviews" section? With most Content Management System's you can do it in one click! You can basically use a CMS to do whatever you want with your content without ever learning about the coding really required to achieve your desired look.
What Are Some Good Content Management Systems?
There are many good CMS's out there and some are better for certain jobs than others.
For Blogging, Wordpress is the hands-down champ. It's extremely popular, easy to use, and there is a TON of free resources available on the internet to help you use it. I personally use it on a few of the sites i manage.
For full featured website, Joomla is one of the most popular Content Management System's available and grows in popularity by the day. Joomla allows you to create virtually any type of site you want - community, blog, ecommerce, review site and more. It's the CMS I run MikeWayne.Com on and it hasn't let me down yet. There are also tons of free resources and tutorial sites on the net to get you up to speed in no time.
I couldn't be fair without mentioning Drupal (Joomla Competitor) or Movable Type (Wordpress Competitor) as well...
Barack Obama and Britney Spears websites are both powered by Movable Type!
Where Can I Download These Content Management Systems?
Where Can I Get More Information About Content Management Systems?
You can read all about Web Content Management Systems on Wikipedia, CMS Critic and Jovia.
Some great sites for learning about Joomla, Wordpress and Drupal are listed below for your browsing pleasure:
Conclusion
I hope that I gave you enough information to get you started. There is a lot more information and details involved in setting up and managing websites that are run on Content Management Systems. The idea here was to give you a basic understanding and a starting point. Feel free to leave a comment or send me a tweet if you need any more clarification!
Quote this article on your site
To create link towards this article on your website,
copy and paste the text below in your page.Preview :
|
Blogger Business Plan Template
The Affiliate Campaign Manager
