CMS – Content Management System Design and Development
In the best example, CMS is the acronym for an easy-to-use framework of Web scripts that offer permissions based collaboration. What makes a great Content Management System is the ease of which non-technical personnel can add content to their organization’s Website.
The ability for different levels of individuals within an company (administrator, editor, contributor) to complete their tasks and not step over each others’ toes is crucial. This applies to any browser-based application whether it be on the Web, Intranet or Extranet.
What are typical components of a CMS?
- Blogging Capabilities
- Media Publishing
- User Registration
- Contact Form Creation
- Newsletter Management
- Calendar System
- Event Management
- Online Form Creation
- Forum Capabilities
A great CMS is easy to use by non-technical personnel
There are many different Web applications which allow easy maintenance without special programming knowledge. With the use of a WYSIWYG interface, the contributor can edit the whole Website remotely without the use of special editors like Dreamweaver ™ , GoLive ™ . CMS applications vary from e-commerce focused applications like Magento, osCommerce and Interchange ™ to blog-based WordPress. WebGUI ™ which is more for simple content changes, to Plone ™ which has a “Wiki” architecture that allows easy collaboration among different departments within segmented company structure. Plone consists of different “plug-ins” which create a powerful suite of useful Web apps which runs on Zope ™ , a Web Application Server.
There are many commercial CMS applications costing thousands of dollars
There are many CMS applications available, though most are commercial (proprietary) costing thousands of dollars in licensing fees. I have chosen to work within the Open-Source community of applications which are consistent with the philosophy that the Internet should remain and open and transparent collaboration of ideas and technologies.
Open source is for the common good and continued vitality of the Web
Keeping the Internet an “Open Collaboration” is for the common good and continued vitality of the Web. And, open source applications are essentially open to improve, experiment and hack without fear of infringing on copyrights as with proprietary software.
There is a great CMS comparison and evaluation site at https://www.opensourcecms.com/ which details different open source Web Applications and lets programmers and users evaluate each.
- Joomla – Open source content management system (CMS), to build Web sites and powerful online applications.
- Drupal – Popular open source CMS which officially started being developed in 1999 and went live in 2001.
- Simple CMS –
- Xaraya – Xaraya’s modular, database independent architecture introduces tools which separate form, function, content, and design. Xaraya delivers the requisite infrastructure for a fully dynamic multi-platform Content Management Solution (CMS).
- WordPress – State-of-the-art semantic personal publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability.
- phpwcms – Very easy to learn with flexibility to separate layout and content.
- Plone© – plone.org – Plone: A user friendly and powerful open source Content Management System
- WebGUI© – WebGUI (pronounced web-gooey) is one of the most popular open source content management systems (CMS) available today.
- Interchange© – Content Management System for e-commerce website development.
New Content Management Systems are being introduced practically every week.
They all have varying strengths. My expertise lies in WordPress. It is by far the most popular open-source Web application. Although its framework was built to be a blogging platform, it has evolved into a robust Content Management System.
