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Content Management System)
A content management system (CMS) is a
computer software system used to assist its users in the
process of
content management. CMS facilitates the organization,
control, and publication of a large body of documents and other
content, such as images and
multimedia resources. A CMS often facilitates the
collaborative creation of documents. A
web
content management system is a content management system with
additional features to ease the tasks required to publish
web content to
web sites.
Web content management systems are often used for
storing, controlling, versioning, and publishing
industry-specific documentation such as news articles,
operators' manuals, technical manuals, sales guides, and
marketing brochures. A content management system may support the
following features:
- Import and creation of documents and multimedia material
- Identification of all key users and their content
management roles
- The ability to assign roles and responsibilities to
different content categories or types.
- Definition of the content workflow tasks, often coupled
with event messaging so that content managers are alerted to
changes in content.
- The ability to track and manage multiple versions of a
single instance of content.
- The ability to publish the content to a repository to
support access to the content. Increasingly, the repository
is an inherent part of the system, and incorporates
enterprise search and retrieval.
- Some content management systems allow the textual aspect
of content to be separated to some extent from formatting.
For example the CMS may automatically set default colour,
fonts, or layout.
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Contents
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1
Forms
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2
Web content management systems
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3
History
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4
Operation
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5
Terminology
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6
Types of CMS
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7
See also
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8
References
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9
External links
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Forms
Content management systems take the following forms:
- a web content management system is
software for
web site management - which is often what is implicitly
meant by this term
- the work of a
newspaper editorial staff organization
- a
workflow for
article publication
- a
document management system
- a
single source content management system - where content
is stored in chunks within a relational database.[1]
Web content management systems
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Main article:
Web content management system
A web content management system is a computer system used to
manage and control a large, dynamic collection of web material
(HTML documents and their associated images). A CMS facilitates
document control, auditing, editing, and timeline management. A
Web CMS provides the following key features:
- Automated templates: Create standard visual
templates that can be automatically applied to new and
existing content, creating one central place to change that
look across all content on a site.
- Easily editable content: Once your content is
separate from the visual presentation of your site, it
usually becomes much easier and quicker to edit and
manipulate. Most CMS software include
WYSIWYG editing tools allowing non-technical individuals
to create and edit content.
- Scalable feature sets: Most CMS have plug-ins or
modules that can be easily installed to extend an existing
site's functionality.
- Web standards upgrades: Active CMS solutions
usually receive regular updates that include new feature
sets and keep the system up to current web standards.
- Workflow management: Workflow is the process of
creating cycles of sequential and parallel tasks that must
be accomplished in the CMS. For example, a content creator
submits a story but it's not published on the
website until the copy editor cleans it up, and the
editor-in-chief approves it.
- Document management: CMS solutions always provide
a means of managing the life cycle of a document from
initial creation time, through revisions, publication,
archive, and document destruction.
History
The term Content Management System was originally used
for website publishing and management systems. Early content
management systems were developed internally at organizations
which were doing a lot of web publishing, such as on-line
magazines, newspapers, and corporate newsletters. In 1995,
CNET
spun out its internal web document management and publication
system into a separate company called
Vignette, which opened up the market for commercial content
management systems.
As markets evolved, the scope of products promoted as content
management systems greatly broadened, fragmenting the meaning of
the term.
Wiki
systems and web-based
groupware are often described as content management systems,
in contrast to the original website publishing management system
definition.
Operation
A web site content management system often runs on the
website's
server. Most systems provide controlled access for various
ranks of users such as administrators, copy editors, senior
editors, and content creators. Access is usually via a web
browser program, possibly combined with some use of
FTP for uploading content.
Content creators submit their documents to the system.
Copy Editors comment on, accept, or reject documents.
Layout editors layout the site. The
editor in chief is then responsible for publishing the work
to the live site. The content management system controls and
helps manage each step of this workflow, including the technical
task of publishing the documents to one or more live web
servers.
The content and all other information related to the site is
usually stored in a server-based
relational database system. The content management system
typically keeps a record of previous website editions and
in-progress editions.
The pages controlled and published through the content
management system can then be seen by the visitors to the
website.
In larger organizations these server based documents need to
communicate with desktop applications and
Open
Document Management APIs perform the necessary
"translations". They have made substantial cost and time savings
to document management overall, and assist in smooth flow of
documents through enterprises, applications and processes.[2]
Lately CMS systems have been associated with
CRM,
Customer Relation Management or Constituent Relationship
Management, software programs. Because of that some software
companies are beginning to create software platforms that bundle
CMS and CRM functions[1].
Terminology
The following terms are often used in relation to web content
management systems but they may be neither standard nor
universal:
- Block
- A block is a link to a section of the web site. Blocks
can usually be specified to appear on all pages of the site
(for example in a lefthand navigation panel) or only on the
home page.
- Module
- A content module is a section of the web site, for
example a collection of news articles, an FAQ section, etc.
Some content management systems may also have other special
types of modules, for example administration and system
modules.
- Theme
- A theme specifies the cosmetic appearance of every page
of the web site, controlling properties such as the colours
and the fonts.
Types of CMS
- Module-based CMS
- Most tasks in a document's life-cycle are served by CMS
modules. Common modules are document creation/editing,
transforming and publishing.
- Document transformation language-based CMS
- Another approach to CMS building with use of open
standards.
XSLT-based CMS compile ready documents from
XML
data and XSLT-template.
XML Sapiens-based CMS compile a document from the stream
of pure data, design template and functionality templates.
- Web-based CMS
- Another approach to CMS building uses databases such as
PostgreSQL,
MySQL or MS SQL, and scripting languages or tools such
as Coldfusion, PHP, jsp or ASP to interact with the data to
parse them into visual content. Data stored in a database
are queried and compiled into html pages or other documents
and transformed using cascading style sheets. These systems
can include a number of other functions, such as discussion
boards, blogs, or email newsletters.
See also
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Digital asset management
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List of content management systems
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Enterprise Content Management
References
- ^
Adaptive content management in structured P2P communities
- ^ ODMA
advantages
External links
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Content management at the
Open Directory Project (suggest
site)
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Make the Right Choice: A Nonprofit's Guide to Content
Management Systems from
Common Knowledge
- Directories of available systems
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Open Source CMS Demo showcase for many content
management systems.
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CMS Matrix Overview of (web) content management systems.
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CMS Watch Annotated lists of major enterprise and web
content management systems.
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Contentmanager Detailed list of content management
systems (attention, paying entries are featured, they're not
featured because they are better!)
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Open Source Scripts Open Source Content Management
Systems.
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PHPXref CMS page Library of cross referenced Open Source
Content Management Systems written in PHP.
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Comparing static webpages with Content Management Systems
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Content Management 365 Portal of content management
system vendors
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Useful and interesting articles about CMS
Categories:
Content management systems |
Website management
