CMS Systems
A content management system (CMS) is computer software used to create, edit, manage, and publish content in a consistently organized fashion. CMSs are frequently used by geeks for storing, controlling, versioning, and publishing industry-specific documentation such as news articles, operators’ manuals, technical manuals, sales guides, and marketing brochures. The content managed may include computer files, image media, audio files, electronic documents, and Web content.
The main purpose of the Content Management System is that it provides the user with an easy to understand Graphical User Interface (GUI) that allows the user to use run processes such as font colour, with the simple click of a button, as opposed to changing the colour via code.
The CMS employs the WYSIWYG formality when editing web content, the interface is visual so as the user is editing the site what they see in the editor is exactly what they’ll see ont he web page when it is published. This is not a feature when coding the site manually.
More advanced users can use the PHP code which most CMS are written in to edit themes and templates that each page is assigned to. This changes the overall outlook of the site. Most of the Content Management Systems covered on this site also have a supported database of MySQL.
There are many examples of Content Management Systems (CMS).
WordPress, a CMS based on PHP and MySQL, which allows for content editing and the editing of templates to get the layout you want in the quickest and most efficient way possible. WordPress can be accessed via the web with a simple login and password. The admin can then implement features using WordPress plug-in architecture, and the CMS template processor allows for easy editing of themes that sets the layout for each page on the website run by WordPress.
Joomla is a Content Management System where the main function is to allow a user to publish content to the web in the best and most user friendly way as possible. Joomla implements PHP and MySQL, just like the other CMS WordPress. Features include Caching, allowing for printable version of the pages to produce hard copies of the sites. The CMS also allows the user to implement search engines powered by external sites i.e. google, blogs and news posts.
Mambo is a CMS that gives the user a simple web interface that allows for editing web pages. Features of the CMS include the use of caching that allows to improve performance of the site. It also allows for web indexing and the creation of blogs and news posts, which tends to be a common features for the majority of CMS’s.
CMS Made Simple is a CMS that employs and adminstrative control panel area to provide site administrators to edit content on the site in the quickest and most efficient way as possible. The CMS gives the user acces to theme editors, so the user can edit the layout of each page assigned to that theme without the need to change any coding or stylesheets.
The Yii Framework form of CMS that allows for Object Orientation Programming (OOP), which is a common feature of programming languages such as PHP and Java. The features differ from other CMS listed on this page. Yii allows for form input and the CMS allows the user to modify the input forms to their required needs. Skinning and Theming is another key attribute of this CMS.
All these named Content Management Systems are free and they are examples of an open source CMS. All these CMS are further explained on this site and can be accessed via the menu above as a sub-menu under the CMS Systems section.
Websites created via a CMS means that the layouts will be very similar since the Content Management System’s theme section gives a template for the page designs. The user only needs to input content and add them to the web pages. If the user is more skilled with languages such as PHP. Then the CMS allows for editing of the templates, so the user can make the page look exactly the way they want it to.