CMS: Content Management System
What is CMS?
CMS stands for Content Management System. TechTarget defines a CMS as, “a software application or set of related programs that are used to create and manage digital content.” A CMS monitors digital content such as webpage and web design information. When an organization or company needs a place to store and distribute important information, they will often utilize the Content Management System Application as a form of enterprise content management. You can think of a CMS as the “backend” of your favorite or popular website. The CMS is where all of the text and images and style of a website is created for the enjoyment of the audience. With big businesses, it is often difficult to keep track of all the information that they wish or need to include on their site. When there is too much information and it is difficult to locate, a CMS comes into play and will make it easier for the admins to navigate the backend of the website pages. This is very useful when businesses or organizations have information that must be updated frequently; a CMS helps the admins efficiently locate the specific page and quickly update the content.
Elon University, for instance, uses a Content Management System to build all of its webpages and update all of its webpage content. Through this, the university administrators are able to edit and update any webpage with new content and create new pages when needed. This is helpful because the university has many webpages with information from all departments and associations that it has to constantly maintain and update.
Step Two identifies several main purposes for a CMS: content creation, content management, publishing, and presentation. Businesses benefit from lower site management costs, faster turnaround for updates and new pages, improved navigation, consistency and flexibility for the entire site.
How does it work?
A CMS connects to a web server to upload webpages to a browser. The admin, who may be a web developer or the owner of a business that owns the site, is able to access the CMS editing space using a login. The admin is able to make quick changes and save them to the live page in real time. Content Management Software will often store old revisions even when a page is updated with new content. Once a page is created with the software, an admin is able to publish and make the page live so that the content is visible to the viewers. A CMS is a more user-friendly and easy to use when creating new pages or updating old ones. The set up is closer to the more commonly recognized Microsoft Word format with little to no need for HTML knowledge. Admins can regulate who has access to the CMS site as appropriate for what section(s) the person need to update. The Content Management System allows a website to have a continuous layout and theme that will be applied automatically to each new page with user-friendly navigation.
References
- Step Two