The internet and the World Wide Web itself have come a long way since the mid to late 90s. Whereas the early days were all about still pages and nothing more wonderful than text and colorful images, today web is active and virtually jumps off the monitor blaring for interaction. The reasoning behind the enhancements is a development that has seen the appearance of various web development tools. A simple building value can form the foundation for a decent website, server-side programming can give it active appeal – the CMS can take your site to entirely different level altogether.
What is a CMS?
Short for content management system, a CMS is a kind of software application used to make and manage large, dynamic websites. For the most part, a CMS contains two chief components: the CMA and the CDA. The content management application or CMA permits you to effectively manage website content with little to no experience in HTML coding. The content delivery application or CDA is the component that permits you to update various areas of the website with ease, which is one of the biggest and attributes of a CMS. The features you get with a CMS vary from product to product, but most have the ability to publish web pages and organize content in a structural manner.
There is a lot you can do with a CMS and you will find that different people describe it in a different way. In regard to content, you can think of that as any text, image or object that can be integrated into a website – all the basics you see on a business website or content-rich blog. A well-rounded, quality CMS will give all the tools desirable to share your content with visitors and internal staff as well. A reliable system must offer the following capabilities:
The ability to make multiple data-driven websites
User management
Full content management
Support for server-side programming
User authentication
Database access
Integrated search capability
Search engine optimization tools
Available Software
Some of the most famous websites are powered by content management systems and there are numerous to select from. Believe it or not, a large number of systems are open-source applications that are free to use. Because most open-source projects give developers entre to the source-code, a CMS can be adapted to serve advantages to an exact webmaster. Drupal, Xoops, PHP-Nuke, TikiWiki, Mambo and the world renowned Joomla are just a few of the several open-source systems on the market. As far as proprietary solutions go, the Microsoft Content Management Server is one of the most widely used systems on the market. This CMS is geared towards enterprise-class solutions and comes integrated with an array of features to support customer interaction.
More developers and webmasters are doing the CMS these days as the content management system has soared to popularity. Whether its making a medium-sized site, a large business portal, high-traffic blog or bloom social network, a good CMS can give you with all the tools needed to make it a success. Need content management? Check out the web hosting deal offered by Blue Host.