What is a CMS?

What is a CMS?

A CMS is a content management system, Content Management System. Let's start at the end, what the system is usually a set of tools, usually supported by a database, consisting of a series of programs on a web server, and optionally a set of client programs that you allowing easy access to these programs on the server. Let us continue with the content management: from the viewpoint of the user of the system is managed in a uniform, accessible, and comfortable, a dynamic web site with regular updates, and on which one can work or more persons, each of which has a specific function, from the customer point of view, it is a dynamic web site with a uniform appearance and interface with a user-centered design, which allows to perform f?°cilmenta the tasks for which it was designed.

Therefore, CMS has two main functions: to facilitate content creation and presentation of such content. Regarding the first, provides a set of tools to publish content as easy as filling out a form, and there is also a single source for all of them, with respect to the second, it facilitates the publication of content in multiple formats from a single source, and add metadata to them, to facilitate navigation in multiple dimensions (time, by category or by author, are only three possible examples). It should also consider two other phases: content management and maintenance of the same, although these phases may be included in the above. In any case, a CMS provides the tools necessary to manage the lifecycle of content: creation, management, presentation and maintenance and updating.

CMS are relatively recent, but previously had a set of professional tools that allow to publish information on intranets, such as Lotus Notes, or more complicated tools for knowledge management business.